Weekly meeting?

is anyone interested? Or even a one-time meet up to discuss some bigger picture items with the Wiki?  contact me (Eileen): [email protected] 

Outreach strategy?

It might be helpful to create an outreach strategy so we can make sure to include all the desired parties, split up responsibilities and not overlap

Not sure what has been done to this effect so far, but would be interested to hear.  -Eileen (emwalz) 9/23

Made a page for social media strategy, feedback on some issues would be great - nortonca 10/12

Design Concepts and Issues

• Clutter
• Visual Appeal (Pictures needed, but needs to be fitting to stylistic guides) (Is there any way to wrap pictures, instead of having text above/below pics?-smkinne2 9/25/12 - Yes! see Nov 10th Tip of the Week or TotW archive)
• Writing Standards/Style
  • Stylistic Guides (so most pages match up to a certain extent).
    • Introduction, body
    • Picture size
    • Tables (size and content)
    • Links
    • Citations
• Front Page Design
  • Color
  • User Friendliness

Features that Would be Nice/Are Excessive

• Discussions pages (e.g. Wikipedia discussions for certain pages)
• Preview Button before publishing
• Advanced Search?
• Quick Edit?
  • In Daviswiki, while signed into an user account, double clicking on text will allow the user to quick edit the line of text
• Wiki Editing style in addition to Rich Text and Source editing
• Comments/reply section (See bottom of articles on Daviswiki)
• Admin/Moderator Messages for specific pages? (e.g. Wiki notices about )
• Disable non-user editing?
  • Alternatively, add IP tracking so to prevent spammers/problematic users? This is pretty much already done. Don't know if IP blocking can happen though.
• Maps
  • Locations should not automatically appear; it makes formatting difficult and the page look cluttered. There should be an option to turn on the map on a page or make it necessary to link to the map from the page.
  • Ability to pinpoint location when creating a new map using an address.
  • Disable scroll wheel on maps (may accidentally scroll out/in and lose the pinpoint; use +/- buttons is preferable) 

​​Ditto on all of these map comments - smkinne2

Content:

• Do we know about http://explorecu.org/ and are we in collaboration with them? Do they know about us? It seems to be a pretty similar idea.--Abousquet 10/15
• CU Web Content
• Wiki Migration from other relevant Wiki Pages
  • Rather than "migration" which induces a feeling of "borrowing" or "stealing" we should reference where the items came from and try to attract  people from those pages to come over
• Help Guides
  • Add things that might not seem obvious or requires a second opinion/thought into the Help page will expand its usability
• Cross Linking between articles
  • Especially once a page is built, I want to link to a CU Wiki page about a location instead of out to the website. This is difficult, but will resolve itself through time with people building pages and fixing links -smkinne2 9/25/12
• Can we establish/agree on a tag to indicate pages that have a link to an outside page that should become a link to a wiki page, as they are made, to help us communicate as we build separately? maybe? -nortonca 9/25/2012
• RE: internal & external links - internal links are the load-bearing beams of the wiki in two major ways: 1) everything in Champaign-Urbana that has a URL can have a wiki page; only link to a thing's external URL from the wiki page of that thing; when editing page A and linking to object B, make it an internal link (even if the page for object B doesn't exist yet), then in the wiki page for object B list the URL. 2) internal cross-linking to represent for relationships that exist in Champaign-Urbana, ie - look at Heel to Toe, New Balance and Birkenstock Concepts. -Brian Z 9/25/12 4:10pm
• "How To" guide (at least links to local wiki guides)
• Logo?
  • I think Brian Zelip is working on this -smkinne2 9/25
  • There's a logo contest going on. -Zizi 10/9/12
• Is there a way to integrate a drop-down menu for the Community Websites page (http://cuwiki.net/Community_Websites) organized by category? Or maybe it should just be reorganized by category? It's hard to find anything and it's not even alphabetized and would be difficult to maintain if it was. -smkinne2 9/25

front page structure

We need to have clear entry points on the front page for the things we think visitors will use most.  Maybe this means more tabs/better menu, or maybe this means boxed entry points.  I propose:

• About section
  • how to edit/contribute
  • about the wiki
  • bios of main groups involved
  • how to actively get involved (promote wiki, meet other contributors)
  • Suggest people use their real names for username and/or make a user profile
• introduction to CU :
  • local Restaurants
  • annual/noteworthy events
  • best things to do
  • history
  • Mystery Picture! (Or maybe we make something else up, as to not copy Davis? -smkinne2 9/25)
• resources
  • social services intro page
  • info about local government
  • public transportation
  • ways to get involved 
• others?

This is a lot to put on the front page. Maybe links to About (introduction to CU), How to, Local Resources, and then maybe Calendar, Contact(?), etc. A friend mentioned that she likes the CU Wiki page because it's not as messy as other local wikis. There are web design standards (i.e., no more than 7 tabs) that we should consider when designing it -smkinne2 9/25

front page pic

Maybe we need a better picture that expresses CU or Champaign County?  I found this one of the round barn, but cannot get it embedded in the welcome box.  What's good about this is that the round barn was invented and promoted at UIUC, and it took hold in Illinois for a while as a more effective design for barns.  So it's unique to C-U. 

Comments

Although the round barn might be a interesting tidbit about CU/Champaign, it's more of a trivia rather than a descriptor of the area. Perhaps it could be on the page as trivia/"Did You Know" items? I like the front page picture thus far. Or maybe we should consider a banner/collage of different items that represent the area? -Zizi 9/2/12

Agreed, I was thinking it would be cool to have a combined picture on the front page of downtown Urbana, campus, and downtown Champaign.   -Eileen 9/23/12

What about using the front page photo space as a way to engage people by soliciting photo uploads that represent CU to them?  The pics could be added to a collection and randomly generated upon each refresh of the home page.  MIT used to use their homepage in this regard to drum up a lot of spirit.  This kind of activity, along with the multiple greeting languages, seems to be a representation of democracy that the technology can facilitate.  What do you think? - Brian Z Sept 24, 2012

I fully agree with Brian's idea. In fact, I'm already looking into some background script for random images. Of course, this would be after I figure out how to make it go behind the search bar/title names. -Zizi 9/25/12

This picture is from: http://uihistoriesproject.chass.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/page.

We need a page to talk about the construction of CU wiki.  Maybe this can be it?

• yes, this can be it.  can we make it conversational?-katewill, Sep 18
• If the future, instead of deleting and erasing things on this page, use the "strike out" function so we know what the conversations were without going into the change logs. Zizi 9/25/12
• Did a system reboot at 2 AM. Everything looks good. Looking into the security updates and see if we need them. Zizi 9/26/12
• Trying out editing via rich text editor Zizi 9/29/12
• Turned out to be an inability to edit with the iPad, everything is well Zizi 9/29/12

May 22, 2012: updated to localwiki version 0.3. Now we have tags that help us easily group pages together like people or restaurants instead of manually compiling lists by hand! Tags are at the bottom of each page in view mode, NOT in edit mode. There's also a new tool to track the development of our site called a dashboard. The main link to the dashboard is at the bottom of the Recent Changes page. Another handy update relates to creating links - now the text you highlight to create a link appears automatically in the create link box; before we had to manually input the link either by copying/pasting or typing it anew. This is only handy for linking to pages within CUWIKI not externally.

August 31, 2012: updated to localwiki version 0.4. No real visual changes, but there's now an API to pull data from CUWiki! Read about it in the link.

See Also

• Places to Put Fliers
• Pages We Want
• Help
• Templates