There are two items to put on the discussion list for the wiki.
First:
Via Don McKinney, the strong request has come through to add page numbers to the various references in the wiki articles. In thinking this through, I am of the opinion we should be using a correct citation format. There are several, each with their own subtle differences:
I've not decided which, but I'm leaning toward the Chicago style for reasons of ease in creating templates with pages.
Second:
It has been in the back of my mind for quite some time that the wiki is maintaining a large chuck of data as text which would be better managed as data. For example, the details of the books required to create the citations above. The data for the citation is (mostly) kept as a blob of semi-formatted text. There are wiki tools for extracting it, but they tend to be difficult to use and persnickety.
There is an extension to the MediaWiki software called "Semantic MediaWiki". This allows storing formatted data in real relational database tables, and be queried out on command. This should let the wiki manage the data used in many of the articles much better and allow for other, cool, tools to happen.
Parsing blocks of text: Old and tired, Querying database tables: New hottness.
To install this requires upgrading the wiki to the latest version (1.25.3), which in turn requires a set of maintenance work on the wiki section of the COTI site. This will cause a period of disruption (hopefully minor) to the wiki, and may (hopefully not) disrupt the CotI boards briefly.
I am currently testing the upgrade on a local VM with a backup of the database, and everything went smoothly. I'm going to do it again just to make sure. I also want to have a better understanding of how the Sematic Mediawiki software works so I can have a working example(s) and descriptions for everyone.
The exact date of the upgrade is not scheduled, but I will let everyone know far in advance.
First:
Via Don McKinney, the strong request has come through to add page numbers to the various references in the wiki articles. In thinking this through, I am of the opinion we should be using a correct citation format. There are several, each with their own subtle differences:
I've not decided which, but I'm leaning toward the Chicago style for reasons of ease in creating templates with pages.
Second:
It has been in the back of my mind for quite some time that the wiki is maintaining a large chuck of data as text which would be better managed as data. For example, the details of the books required to create the citations above. The data for the citation is (mostly) kept as a blob of semi-formatted text. There are wiki tools for extracting it, but they tend to be difficult to use and persnickety.
There is an extension to the MediaWiki software called "Semantic MediaWiki". This allows storing formatted data in real relational database tables, and be queried out on command. This should let the wiki manage the data used in many of the articles much better and allow for other, cool, tools to happen.
Parsing blocks of text: Old and tired, Querying database tables: New hottness.
To install this requires upgrading the wiki to the latest version (1.25.3), which in turn requires a set of maintenance work on the wiki section of the COTI site. This will cause a period of disruption (hopefully minor) to the wiki, and may (hopefully not) disrupt the CotI boards briefly.
I am currently testing the upgrade on a local VM with a backup of the database, and everything went smoothly. I'm going to do it again just to make sure. I also want to have a better understanding of how the Sematic Mediawiki software works so I can have a working example(s) and descriptions for everyone.
The exact date of the upgrade is not scheduled, but I will let everyone know far in advance.