Tips & guidelines link
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*If you need a bit of time to learn the wiki text and the intimate functioning of mediawiki, just send your website (the main page and the set of subpages representing your organization) to the editorial staff as a collection of "Word" or, preferably, Open Office documents, with pictures, tables, and other rich content within them, and they will create the related pages on your behalf. By doing so, just check the following [[Istituto_cultura_italiana_(NGO)|organization's page]] as reference of a possible "site" structure, and the set of forms to be found [[How_it_works/Forms_%26_semantic_data|here]] in order to put together a meaningful set of data. For instance, once that you know that the form "article", is structured [[Special:FormEdit/Article|this way]], you can just create a "Word" or Open Office document for each article, post, or "news", with all the required information, so that the editorial staff will not have to get back to you with further requirements. The same applies for all the forms which can be found in the [[How it works/Forms & semantic data|same page]]. (to be noted that the example organization does not use yet all the available forms) | *If you need a bit of time to learn the wiki text and the intimate functioning of mediawiki, just send your website (the main page and the set of subpages representing your organization) to the editorial staff as a collection of "Word" or, preferably, Open Office documents, with pictures, tables, and other rich content within them, and they will create the related pages on your behalf. By doing so, just check the following [[Istituto_cultura_italiana_(NGO)|organization's page]] as reference of a possible "site" structure, and the set of forms to be found [[How_it_works/Forms_%26_semantic_data|here]] in order to put together a meaningful set of data. For instance, once that you know that the form "article", is structured [[Special:FormEdit/Article|this way]], you can just create a "Word" or Open Office document for each article, post, or "news", with all the required information, so that the editorial staff will not have to get back to you with further requirements. The same applies for all the forms which can be found in the [[How it works/Forms & semantic data|same page]]. (to be noted that the example organization does not use yet all the available forms) | ||
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*If, by contrast, your team includes some IT professional or you feel enough courageous (after a preliminary phase of study, and trials) to deal with wiki text and the autonomous creation of pages and contents, just follow the following (sub) tips: | *If, by contrast, your team includes some IT professional or you feel enough courageous (after a preliminary phase of study, and trials) to deal with wiki text and the autonomous creation of pages and contents, just follow the following (sub) tips: | ||
**First. Check the interface. After logging in you will see on the left the left navigation bar (picture 1), with some standard links, plus (a) the organization to which you are affiliated, (b) the list of available forms, and (c) the list of available templates (for a description about what templates and forms serve, see [[How_it_works/Forms_%26_semantic_data|here]], or keep reading). On the top you will find the top menu (picture 2) with the tabs "read" (the display of the article), "Edit" (the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG WYSIWYG] editor of the article), "Edit source", the wiki text editor of the article, and following the button "Add form" by which you can add '''to the current article''' one of the available forms if the article does not contains any form: indeed a constraint of this wiki is that you cannot insert more than one form within an article, due to our specific data structure. [[File:How it works/Tips & guidelines/Wiki left panel.png|thumb|picture 1]][[File:How_it_works/Tips_&_guidelines/Wiki_top_menu.jpg|alt=|thumb|422x422px|picture 2]] | **First. Check the interface. After logging in you will see on the left the left navigation bar (picture 1), with some standard links, plus (a) the organization to which you are affiliated, (b) the list of available forms, and (c) the list of available templates (for a description about what templates and forms serve, see [[How_it_works/Forms_%26_semantic_data|here]], or keep reading). On the top you will find the top menu (picture 2) with the tabs "read" (the display of the article), "Edit" (the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG WYSIWYG] editor of the article), "Edit source", the wiki text editor of the article, and following the button "Add form" by which you can add '''to the current article''' one of the available forms if the article does not contains any form: indeed a constraint of this wiki is that you cannot insert more than one form within an article, due to our specific data structure. [[File:How it works/Tips & guidelines/Wiki left panel.png|thumb|picture 1]][[File:How_it_works/Tips_&_guidelines/Wiki_top_menu.jpg|alt=|thumb|422x422px|picture 2]] | ||
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**So now you know why Mediawiki does not provide an editor as easy as a word processor: because it is not desirable in order to achieve an homogeneous formatting (or typographical) standard, given that theoretically (!) anyone can contribute to and edit Wikipedia (Wikimedia, at bottom) articles, and because you can be completely unconstrained (or unconstrained in a productive way, that is based on knowledge, and creativity) going back to the mechanisms and logic producing the elements, rather than just manipulating those elements without a broader knowledge and some aesthetic sensitivity. This is also the reason because the method of sending to the editorial staff of this wiki your site's contents until you don't reach this expertise, can work (thus at a price) : because the documents will be not translated to html or wiki text ''as they are'', but (hopefully) they will be used as source of information to be placed in the proper typographical and semantic structure. | **So now you know why Mediawiki does not provide an editor as easy as a word processor: because it is not desirable in order to achieve an homogeneous formatting (or typographical) standard, given that theoretically (!) anyone can contribute to and edit Wikipedia (Wikimedia, at bottom) articles, and because you can be completely unconstrained (or unconstrained in a productive way, that is based on knowledge, and creativity) going back to the mechanisms and logic producing the elements, rather than just manipulating those elements without a broader knowledge and some aesthetic sensitivity. This is also the reason because the method of sending to the editorial staff of this wiki your site's contents until you don't reach this expertise, can work (thus at a price) : because the documents will be not translated to html or wiki text ''as they are'', but (hopefully) they will be used as source of information to be placed in the proper typographical and semantic structure. | ||
**Secondly (now that you know the rational of both Visual editor and the wiki text editor (button "Edit source") check the wiki text of the [[Istituto_cultura_italiana_(NGO)|example page]]. You will see, apart the template "Form organization" which holds the data retrieved from the corresponding form, that '''the "code" does contain much less information of that contained in the page itself''' (once rendered). The same applies for the main page of this [[How it works]] area. How does it work ? The answer can be found in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Transclusion this page] and the (bizarre) name of the feature is "transclusion", which is a mean to include a portion or all the content of a page into another page by reference, which is indeed especially useful when you have to put together the information sparse on various pages, for showcasing them, in such a way that the edits done on the source contents will just reflect automatically in the target page, so that you have only a "source of truth" and you can keep working on that: we are not sure whether that can be done or not easily using a common word processor, but the answer is that, while this is a shocking feature of Mediawiki, it still covers almost up to the limit imaginable, the realm of digital typography. | **Secondly (now that you know the rational of both Visual editor and the wiki text editor (button "Edit source") check the wiki text of the [[Istituto_cultura_italiana_(NGO)|example page]]. You will see, apart the template "Form organization" which holds the data retrieved from the corresponding form, that '''the "code" does contain much less information of that contained in the page itself''' (once rendered). The same applies for the main page of this [[How it works]] area. How does it work ? The answer can be found in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Transclusion this page] and the (bizarre) name of the feature is "transclusion", which is a mean to include a portion or all the content of a page into another page by reference, which is indeed especially useful when you have to put together the information sparse on various pages, for showcasing them, in such a way that the edits done on the source contents will just reflect automatically in the target page, so that you have only a "source of truth" and you can keep working on that: we are not sure whether that can be done or not easily using a common word processor, but the answer is that, while this is a shocking feature of Mediawiki, it still covers almost up to the limit imaginable, the realm of digital typography. | ||
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(to be continued!) | (to be continued!) | ||
</noinclude> | </noinclude> | ||
Revision as of 09:18, 20 August 2020
Once that you are provided with an account, and with the privileges to edit your organization page and subpages, just keep in mind the following guidelines and principles.
- By contrast to what you would expect, wiki is not user-friendly. This, indeed, at first may hurt you, but actually that is the requisite to create not only quality contents, but also contents not constrained in a specific formatting standard. For this reason, we strongly encourage you to initiate a cooperation with your IT (information technology) department to send forth and back to it your contents, in order to reach the desired results shortly. Of course, also your students with some IT skill might be involved in that work. However, inasmuch as they are typically good, their expertise could be not sufficient, and the final revision of your pages should be always reviewed by professionals.
- Because the point above, Cultura italiana foresees that you can send such contents to the email address redazione@culturaitaliana.org and the editorial staff will create for you your organization's pages, for free. However, this is not the best solution on the long term since by this way you will be prevented to structure your pages in an autonomous way and the editorial staff will be required to ask you all the necessary information via email, and you will have to address continuously to them for any non-minor editing.
- On a first stage, edits or creation of your pages will be moderated. That means that once an administrator does not grant you with the role of "moderator", your edits or created pages will be not publicly visible until they are not approved by an administrator. Usually we expect that the contents have to be moderated until a user or a center of Italian language and culture shows a sufficient expertise (however this is achieved), or its set of pages reaches a certain degree of completeness: after that, its affiliated users will be assigned to the role of "moderator" and their edits will not be required of being approved anymore.
- Independently by your status as "moderator", as affiliated to a given organization, you will be able to edit only your organization's page and the related subpages (which can be arbitrarily created), plus, to create or edit any content created using the forms Add opportunity, Add reading suggestion, Add digital library, or any other form meant to create common contents (not intended to your organization's page and subpages), while you will be prevented to edit, create, move or delete any other page of this wiki, obviously for a matter of mutual guarantees.
- We are considering whether to add an alternate, streamlined interface (likewise the frontend side of the platform) also for creation and editing of pages, including creation and editing of semantic contents (i.e. contents of fields of the available forms). It is possible that it will be available in the near future, however, as above, we encourage you and your team to just get equipped with the expertise and skills necessary to deal with wiki text (or alternatively with markdown, as another possible content model) inasmuch as whatever interface will constrain you to a specific formatting and you will not take advantage of the full potential of this platform, if not indirectly.
- Create your contents in the language which usually you adopt dealing with your audience. That could be the official language of your hosting country, English (if not all the members of your team are fluent with the local language) or Italian itself. If the main language of your contents is not English or Italian, we require that you create an alternate page in English or Italian at least for the primary pages: otherwise, a generic audience will not be able to access those pages, given that the main purpose of this platform is precisely the interrelation among organizations and their audience.
- If you need a bit of time to learn the wiki text and the intimate functioning of mediawiki, just send your website (the main page and the set of subpages representing your organization) to the editorial staff as a collection of "Word" or, preferably, Open Office documents, with pictures, tables, and other rich content within them, and they will create the related pages on your behalf. By doing so, just check the following organization's page as reference of a possible "site" structure, and the set of forms to be found here in order to put together a meaningful set of data. For instance, once that you know that the form "article", is structured this way, you can just create a "Word" or Open Office document for each article, post, or "news", with all the required information, so that the editorial staff will not have to get back to you with further requirements. The same applies for all the forms which can be found in the same page. (to be noted that the example organization does not use yet all the available forms)
(to be continued!)