Talk:Quantum Monte Carlo Wiki Home
From QMC
[edit] Discussion Stalled?
Nigh 10:43, 29 June 2006 (CDT) We seem to have stalled. Where are we? Where are we going? Here, BTW, is a point by point comparison of confluence, wikimedia and twiki [[1]]. It shows, e.g., that twiki has a plugin for doing equations. The daily digest issue, does not seem to be one. It therefore seems that we can live with any of these choices, although it would not seem wise to me to give up on equations, as confluence forces us to do, even if the kind of math writing that is supported is will be of limited use only. In the final analysis, it seems that the choice ought to be made by assigning 99% of the weight to the preference of the person administering the wiki, i.e., Jeongnim.
--Jeongnim 14:35, 29 June 2006 (CDT) If I am to adminster the wiki, I prefer MediaWiki. It also presents me a new opportunity to learn to use mysql more. Regardless, I plan to order DNS. I suggested while ago www.qmcnetwork.org because it is available. qmcwiki.org (Paul Kent has proposed) is other possibility. Welcome any suggestion.
Nigh 14:54, 29 June 2006 (CDT) votes for MediaWiki; and for qmcwiki.org, the shortest of the two contenders. (Is the box with formatting options (bold, itatlic, etc) new or is it my browser?)
--JK 17:13, 29 June 2006 (CDT) 11 buttons were there all the time for me. I have been using the second last button to start my message.
--Jeongnim 13:32, 10 July 2006 (CDT) Just let you know that www.qmcwiki.org is registered. I am traveling for now but when I get back (Thurs), I hope to send out emails to qmc users for the new URL and MediaWiki update.
[edit] Please put pros and cons for wikimedia or confluence for the QMC wiki (david June 21)
[edit] Wikimedia has better support for equations
I (Nigh 22:02, 21 June 2006 (CDT)) agree, but can you refer to equations symbolically? I just tried \label and \ref and failed. How far can you get without that?
--JK 09:32, 22 June 2006 (CDT) We have to think about now and future. I expect similar plugins or extensions for confluence or twiki will show up pretty soon. I have been promissing a similar plugin for UIUC group for some time for confluence, but I have been distracted to do something else.
[edit] We have an inhouse expert for Confluence
It took forever to find out that it's impossible to get the kind of daily digest that I (Nigh) wanted: only the QMC wiki, but the whole QMC wiki. I'm not sure how we finally found out. We have a whole www full of dedicated experts for Wikimedia; when I used/administered twiki, I never had a problem that a google could not solve.
JK: I submitted a question to the developers. The basic assumption that each space on confluence can act independently was wrong. After all, that is not going to be good for the company. Setting up MediaWiki and users etc is rather trivial but I don't have expertise to anticipate potential problems, especially security-related problems, and to response to them effectively. Indeed, we disabled any advanced feature or plugin for confluence for security reasons.
I have to qualify the word "exprt". I meant experts in web service and database. We (MCC) are still learning about confluence. The important point of using confluence for MCC is the potential to customize and improve for diverse applications.
[edit] Confluence has a licence, might be difficulty moving away from UIUC.
--JK 09:53, 22 June 2006 (CDT) If we can get a non-profit organization status, the license is free. Moving a database can be done easily (both MediaWiki and Confluece). I want to move the database server to a secure and well-managed one like at NCSA, once we decide on the wiki engine.
[edit] Is the lack of copyright mentioned below an issue?
I (Nigh) don't think so. I don't know what the legal situation is with Confluence, but for all practical purpose it seems that if you put something on the web your intention ought to be, and proably is, that you put in the the public domain.
[edit] Wikimedia seems more direct in its organization
E.g., the diff function is not that many clicks away it seems. I (Nigh) did not really count, but that was my impression. The differences with previous versions of a page are more transparent.
[edit] Wikimedia has more of a Unixy feel to it
I (Nigh) count that as a plus for Wikimedia.
[edit] Special purpose plugins do not have to be bought, but can be downloaded from the web
--JK 09:55, 22 June 2006 (CDT) This is true for all the wiki engines we are considering. There are open-source or free plugins and plugins that have to be paid for. Often, an advanced feature is available only for the paid customer of the plugins and extensions.
[edit] Certain features of Confluence seem to have been turned off by the Confluence administrator
See my (Nigh) comment about daily digests. I'm not sure that this is a complaint about Confluence or about the fact that we don't have our own Confluence wiki. At this point, we have no control over all we want to control. Jeongmin should comment on this. I don't know the details of all problems we encountered in the last couple of weeks.
JK: Yes, we disabled many features for security reasons. Only admins can perform certain tasks. I feel very uncomfortable managing web site. Anyway, having a stand-alone wiki for QMC communtity is important, instead making it a branch of a big structure. If the confluence were dedicated to QMC wiki, I could have granted administrative powers to Peter and David and other trusted members.
===Is this the way to format a discussion?=== Can anybody reconstruct who said what? Does it matter?
[edit] Can we apply for non-profit organization licence of confluence?
This will make sense if the users feel stronly that the "wiki experience" per se is better with confluece (editing, pdf, linking).
[edit] MediaWiki runs with Apache and Confluence with tomcat (or other Java servers)
The stability and performance of Apcache are probably superior to tomcat but I am not making any claim about this. Does anybody know?
[edit] Two users editing a page simultaneously
JK and I (PN) were editing this page at the same time. When I wanted to save the page, I ran into trouble. I'm pretty sure that twiki simply does not allow two people to edit the same page simultaneaouly. It uses Unix RCS (Revision Control System) for that purpose and issues a message "page busy" to all but the first person. What does Confluence do?
--JK 08:55, 22 June 2006 (CDT) Confluence shows a warning-message pannel saying "someone is editing". Caching works differently for different engines, php or java, and database. Something to google about.
[edit] Please add comments about decisions to be made and wiki dynamics
[edit] What is the status of the current Wikimedia and Confluence wikis?
My (Nigh) impression is that the Wikimedia wiki is an experiment and that it should be treated as something that will disappear once we make up our minds about how to proceed and with what wiki. If this one is going to be the real thing, I suggest we change all Qmc instances to QMC; it's a detail, but it keeps bugging me; and if it is, I clean up "just fooling around on the home page.
--JK 10:30, 22 June 2006 (CDT) Done, I think.
[edit] Wiki dynamics
We've been having email exchanges in pairs, triplets, etc. I (Nigh) think that we should continue our discussion on this wiki to learn how these things work and what the most efficient format is for a discussion. I keep identifying myselff with the three tilda; it feels silly. Is it useful? There are two ways of looking at a wiki. It can be seen as a glorified archive, the burial grounds of people's scientific work. That may be useful, but to me it seems to static a view. I would prefer an ongoing discussion of sorts. Do people agree? If so, the question is how do we get the group dynamics going?
I've been fixated on the daily email digests. This alerts those who subsrcibe to them to the latest contributions. I think that it's a vital part of the dynamics and we have not been able to get it to work satisfactorily, neither with Confluence nor with Wikimedia. I'm probably saying that because I liked what twiki produced, which we are not using. Is the issue of a clear daily digest really important? There is the RSS alternative (see How_to_use_media_wiki). The format is good. The only problem I have with it is that it requires subscriber initiative; a daily email provides a periodic reminder. Maybe there is a way of setting things up so that we get a transcript of the RSS page automatically. See the bottom of How_to_use_media_wiki for a comment about Enotic (email notification). What does this do? Does it solve our problem, if we have one?
Let me repeat something else that I've said before. I think we should sort things out as best we can before we do another mass emailing. Once we do, we should explain carefully what our ideas are for the dynamics and what the tools (emails, rss, "watch this page," ...) and formats (the list of options at the top of the page: such as "article," "discussion," etc. (What BTW is "+"?). --JK 08:46, 22 June 2006 (CDT) I have not figured that out either.
--JK 08:46, 22 June 2006 (CDT) Both confluence and MediaWiki use mysql and we know pretty well what they have. Adding a script to generate a daily digest with mysql query will be done if we decide on one of them. If I had known the confluence daily update stuff, we could have moved on with an external script from the beginning. That is what is done with other NSF-related activites for which Amy generates a daily summary. Therefore, we can assume that the daily digest in a reasonable form is/will be available for both MediaWiki and confluence.
[edit] What is the status of the current Wikimedia and Confluence wikis?
Testing comment (+ tab) by JK but not what I expected to see. It just added a new section.
