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This page is for people using the ITSIG wiki to add comments, questions, and suggestions. Just click on the “Edit this page” link to get started. If you would like to visually separate your contribution from preceding ones (this is sometimes called “thread” mode), you can start with a line of four hyphens (i.e. ----) to get this:
Brenda Chawner
If you make a comment (or reply to a comment), it’s a good idea to “sign” your comment with your name (other contact information is optional).

Browser issues

When I go Back to a previous page, the link I last followed is no longer underlined. I’m using IE6. Bob Pearson

It is the way IE browsers on Windows handle links when using the back button. For IE6, when returning to the previous page, click in the page (not a link) and the underline reappears. IE5.2 on Mac OS X works correctly. John Rankin

I’m sorry but experience indicates that your first sentence here is incorrect. When I follow a link on the Affinity wiki and use the Back button, the visited link is automatically underlined. Likewise when I use the Pm wiki at www.kallisti.net.nz. It is just on the LIANZA wiki that one has to click in the page to get the underline back. Does it really matter? I think so, because the colour of the visited link does not stand out well from the rest of the text. Bob

I think I’ve got to the bottom of it and IE6 is behaving exactly as specified in the style sheet. The style sheet on this wiki specifies “text-decoration: none;” for active links. When you click the back button on IE6, the link to this page is still “active” and IE6 displays it according to the style sheet’s specification. The affinity wiki has a slightly different style sheet. So I stand by my first sentence above, although to be more precise it could have read “active links”. John

IMO the Affinity style sheet specification for active links is superior and I suggest it be implemented here too for the benefit of us poor souls inflicted with Wintel IE6. Bob

Try it now.
Nice. Thanks John. Bob

Navigating to other groups

If I go from Main to pages one level below Main (eg Wiki FAQ), the Main item on the side menu is not active. Intentional? I’m using IE6. Bob

[It] is a “feature” — only groups other than the current one are active. To get to the “home page” for your current group, you can click on the group name in the title bar. Brenda

I can’t say I like the “feature” of only groups other than the current one being active. IMHO the group home page should only be inactive when that page is displayed, not when other pages from the group are. Bob

The page layout contains 2 links from the current page to the home page of the current group — the top left, next to the page title and the bottom right, next to the site home link. having a third link seems a bit OTT. If we make it a link, how do you propose to indicate in that list of groups which is the current group? A » next to it, perhaps, or » group « maybe? Or is it not necessary to highlight the current group? John

No it’s not OTT. I think it is the most important of the 3 possibilities. There is nothing to indicate visually that the top left link is a link and not just a title. A menu is a menu is a menu. Every dish should be selectable delectable, except when the particular page is already displayed. I don’t know whether things have changed since you made the comments, but the current group IS indicated. In my browser the current group appears in turquoise while the other groups are red. This seems good enough to me. Bob

I have added underline to the group and title in the header (see top of page), so it’s more obvious that these are links. It’s a bit more work to make the current group in the side list a link and turquoise, so that won’t happen overnight. The idea of a menu is only a metaphor, of course. A different metaphor is a lift, with each group a floor — one takes a lift to get to a different floor. As Donald Norman says in The Invisible Computer, “A metaphor is always wrong, by definition” and “Forget metaphors — they will only get in the way”. I wonder if making the current group a link will dilute the purpose of the list, which is to show the group structure of the wiki. You haven’t convinced me yet. For example, many people know that a greyed out item signifies “this operation is not applicable in the current context”. John

Many people know what a greyed out item signifies but why should the operation of getting to a group home page from another page in the group be “not applicable in the current context”?

Because there’s a link right above it in the header.

Is the primary purpose of the list really to show the group structure? To me a menu is a navigational tool. It’s a ‘doing’ thing not just a ‘showing’ thing. If I can see the structure but I can’t click on every item, I’m hampered.

Again, there’s a link right above it in the header. Why is this a problem? John

The link above it is fine, but not sufficient IMO. Bob

I don’t think the lift metaphor is as good as the menu metaphor. There’s a reason it’s called the World Wide Web and not the World Wide Elevator. This very Comments page is a case in point. It’s in the ITSIG group but there’s no link to it (that I can find) from the group home page or any of the other pages in the group. The only link I have found is from the Main group home page. Hey, that’s the beauty of hypertext (even though plenty of webspace is organised in plain old hierarchies). But the lift metaphor breaks down because we’re getting off the lift at the Main floor but finding ourselves on the ITSIG floor! Now I suppose someone will make a link to this page from the ITSIG home page and remove the link on the Main page thus turning this web site into an elevator site. :-) But if we’re going to have an elevator site, the Comments page would more logically go in the Main group as it contains comments on the wiki as a whole not just on the ITSIG group. Bob

A metaphor is only a metaphor and Donald Norman thinks we should forget about them, because, as in this discussion, they get in the way and shed more heat than light. Metaphors are neither good nor bad; they are more or less useful, depending on the context. The same metaphor can be useful in some contexts and less useful in others, but it’s still only a metaphor. The trouble is, metaphors become so pervasive that they can constrain our thinking. I don’t understand your connection between webs and menus. Those are two different metaphors. There is nothing to stop you from linking to this page from anywhere you choose. If you want a link to it from somewhere in the ITSIG group, then add one. That doesn’t mean you have to remove the link to it from the Main group. But you can if you want to.

The information architecture for a wiki is novel and Ward Cunningham (the inventor of the concept) is quite possibly a genius. I for one am still learning how to use wikis effectively. The underlying model is that any page can link to any other page, including itself, and pages are organised into groups. There is no hierarchy of pages. A group doesn’t actually have a “home page” — what this wiki does is look for a page that might reasonably be construed as a sensible place to go, or that we have told it we want to treat as the starting point in a group. So yes, a link will sometimes take you to another group. Why shouldn’t it? And yes, the list at the side is a list of groups. My experience is that often the group structure is the thing people find hardest to grasp, so that’s why we made the list visible. It’s a judgment call; you disagree with the way it’s done. Of course, if you want other ways of navigating, simply create them as wiki pages, such as using Wiki Trails, and link to them. John

I’m new to wikis and finding the concept quite fascinating. I agree with most of what you say in the previous paragraphs. However I don’t see what the big deal is about groups. The concept seems very simple to me so maybe I’m completely missing the point. I think it is daft for a page to link to itself. That seems completely pointless and just wastes the time of users who click on the link assuming it is going to take them to a different page. I’m starting to get the impression that wikis (or maybe just this one!) are still a bit of a nerdy thing rather than catering for the masses in terms of useability.

It’s really up to the authors how they use the site — wikis favour writers over readers. For example, wikipedia has an editorial policy that writers don’t link pages to themselves, but emphasise the first occurrence of the page name in the text. On other wikis, especially ones that use free links a lot, the creator of a new page includes a self-referring link as a courtesy to her fellow authors. “Here is how you can link to this page.” Wikis give people the maximum freedom to develop policies that best meet their needs. If this community wants a policy not to link pages to themselves, then it can adopt one. Everything that’s new has to be learnt before it becomes usable. But usability is a whole other discussion and just one aspect of the experience…

S.R. Ranganathan’s 4th Law of Library Science - Save the time of the reader. It applies to our user interfaces as much as to pre-digital library services. Bob

For wikis, change “reader” to “writer” happy smiley The Wiki FAQ has more on self-referring pages.

Standards compliance

IE5 on Win 95 presents another problem. Punctuation marks such as quote marks and hyphens display as solid vertical bars.

This wiki follows the W3C recommendations for character entities. It appears that IE5 on Win95 (and other older browsers) does not implement these in full. Should we be trying to cater for all browsers, or should we be implementing a standards-compliant site? Currently, the wiki takes a standards-centric approach. For example, it uses Unicode to implement long vowels, as in Māori. Neither Microsoft Windows pre-98 nor Apple Macintosh pre-OSX supports this. What should be the policy for this wiki? John

This very question came up at the ITSIG workshop at LIANZA 2003 Conference, although in reference to library websites in general rather than to this wiki. The view expressed (and it seemed to get only murmurs of approval and no disagreement) was that we should cater for all browsers being used rather than blindly adhering to standards. Someone said that even if 1% of our users are using a particular browser, we should cater for it. Perhaps this is a question that we should post to the ITSIG mailing list. Bob

Well I’m not sure about the word “blindly” — the SSC web guidelines state that sites should adopt a standards-based approach, in particular HTML 4.01 and Unicode. Like many others, the main LIANZA web site at http://www.lianza.org.nz/ uses Unicode, which means that when I’m running Mac OS 9, the macrons don’t display — I understand and accept this. See also the discussion about special characters on wikipedia. John

Wiki Persona contains thumbnail sketches of hypothetical ITSIG Wiki contributors.
The calendar has disappeared from the calendar page. — It’s back. Thanks to John for fixing it.

Searching

The site search facility defaults to searching the Main group. I suggest it better to default to ‘All groups’.

It actually defaults to the current group - which makes sense (to me at least) for the Research component, but perhaps not for the rest of the wiki. I’ll see if I can change it. Brenda Chawner

We’re both half right. The one at the bottom of the page defaults to the current group. The SearchWiki link at the top right defaults to Main.

The Search Wiki link takes you to a page in Main group called Search Wiki. Hence when it shows the current group, it’s Main. We can change it so that the search box on the Search Wiki page (indeed, any page containing the [[$Search]] markup, which inserts a search box) defaults to “all groups”, whereas the one at the bottom of each page defaults to the current group.

I think it better if they both default to “all groups”.
Page last modified on 02 December 2003, at 08:11 AM
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