mutiple page FAQs November 30, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , 3commentsI’m thinking about FAQ documents, and how to structure them when they
start to get large and unweildy. The use of wiki technology can allow
this to happen sooner than it used to.
The problem I first identified is to do with the trade-off between
individual page size and excessive navigation, which seemed at first like a web
development problem. But there’s also the knowledge related problem
of not wanting to set up overly rigid categories by defining the
individual pages, which would then tend to become fixed.
Anyway, I asked this question on the mediawiki-l list:
“I’d be interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on the best way to
construct a large FAQ in mediawiki. I can see some advantage in
having lots of short pages, perhaps even one Q&A per page, in terms of being
able to assign categories and create an automatic index that way. But
that makes it difficult to browse and scroll around when you’re not
sure what you’re looking for.
So I’m leaning towards having several long pages each containing related Q&As
The main index page would then link to these pages, but ideally would
also list just the titles from each of the Questions in the other
pages.
So I’d like to generate a kind of Table Of Contents (TOC) for a set of pages, perhaps but I can’t see how to do that at present.”
Not receiving any replies, I did some more research. Mediawiki’s own
FAQ consists of a single long page with a two tiered table of
contents. This seems to be pretty standard, and is the same as has
been developing organically on my site. Interestingly
though, the current mediawiki FAQ is a shorter version of one which was earlier
hosted on another site.
When researching muti-page FAQs I came across this pattern more than
once. A FAQ is started up, it grows, then it gets to a point where it
is considered too big and some change occurs. This would appear to be a classic quantity into quality transformation.
For example
Q Where’s the old FAQ!?!
A The former multi-page FAQ grew too large, and for release 0116, it
has been dispersed throughout the reference.”
So whilst I’m still on the look out for a good format for a multi-page
FAQ, I’m beginning to suspect that this is only a short-lived
transitional form, in which case it may be possible to skip straight
on to or at least prepare for, the next developmental stage.
MySpace November 29, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music , add a commentAs a researcher musician, one has to have a MySpace..
and a blog page to link to.
MOO November 26, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Flickr , 6commentsMy ten free MOO cards arrived last month, I took them to Italy and back, and then I put them down somewhere very safe, except I can’t remember where it was.
Now I need to find them again in time for Wednesday.
Curses.
I’ll need to order two batches of 100 as well, for different purposes.
Stephen Downes installs Drupal 5 November 23, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : drupal, edublog , 1 comment so farOn his blogger blog, Stephen Downes has been writing about implementing his main website as a drupal 5 installation. It’s nowhere near finished yet, and there are already lengthy articles numbered part one to part seven. I suspect he’s writing all of this down in great detail, mainly for his own benefit in order to be able to retrace his own steps if necessary, but in so doing he is also succeeding in sharing two types of knowledge which are of great benefit to developers. There’s the hard knowledge which is contained in the links, the facts, tables and technical explanations, and also a lot of soft knowledge is imparted through the telling of the story, illustrating an approach to development which works for one individual, blogging the frustrations and breakthroughs soon after they occur.
So I’m greatly appreciating this blog series both for the handy tips and links embedded within, and as an enjoyable and beneficial overall read .
On Barn Raising again November 22, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, Community, COP, Wiki , add a commentEarlier barn raising
Back in March this year, I was frantically running various exhibitions, gathering data and writing up reports for the degree course from which I graduate this week. Part of that was a Barn Raising event, which is explained here and here and here or view search results here . We didn’t exactly build a barn in the end, but there was a coffee shop for a while, and some useful development of the 4 dichotomies. My thoughts about that at the time were documented in an exhibition write up module.
With more passing of time and with further developments in the wikisphere such as the proliferation of wikispaces and now jotspot etc I would be less inclined to attempt an inter-community barn raising as envisaged back then. Wiki takeup has grown way beyond the boundaries of any single thing with a common purpose which could be described as THE wiki community. There are now legion.
FAQ building
But the metaphor of barn raising, of gathering people together to pool efforts for a limited period with a specific focus is still a useful one.
I’ve used it recently within some communities in order to get a FAQ document off the ground. In the first case, there wasn’t a wiki at all beforehand, but there was a strongly held belief that an old FAQ document existed somewhere, in people’s inboxes, waiting for time to update it. This had been the situation for at least three years such is the slow pace at which things actually get done in that place! It only took a suggestion from myself made twice, and then someone else to actually create the wikispace, then a tiny bit of adjustment and encouragment and all of a sudden the whole thing fell into place. A smallish group worked together to get the FAQ and the Wiki all sorted out within less than a week or so. Something had definitely been built which beforehand hadn’t existed. I got a nice acknowlegement, just for triggering the process really. (Don’t blame me if you go and read the FAQ and try to make sense of it)
Page of the week
Another practice which I’ve adopted is that of designating a “page of the week” on the DAR wiki. This is mainly a means of focussing my own attention on a page, usually in alignment with something that is going on in one of the communities I belong to. A week can be much longer than seven days, by the way.
ukcider wiki
Closer to the original concept, is the current push on the ukcider wiki to build up the cider makers FAQ. I initialised this originally by suggesting that sometime in November we should designate one week as “FAQ week” in which efforts are channeled together. This turned into a less specific FAQ month and has had considerable sucess, with a handful of people helping to develop the FAQ from a skeleton into a sizeable resource, at the same time encouraging wider and deeper discussion of the core practices on the mailing list. Should I perhaps write a separate entry entitled How to organise a FAQ month?
Wikipedia raids
Finally, I wanted to point to a related practice realated by Shawn Callahan at Anecdote, called “Wikipedia raids“, which is not so alarmingly Viking as it may sound. I can see a lot of value in using collaboration on a domain-related wikipedia page as a community building excercise, and I’m eager to try that out soon, taking care not to set up an instant all out conflict between the raiders and resident wikipedians!
Two Dereks November 15, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : pratodialogue, edublog , add a commentI’ve been reading Derek Wenmoth’s blog since he first joined what was then known as “Ultralab South”, now CORE Education, and often find much to applaud, for example about Personal Learning Environments ( and [2] and [3] and [4]. The other Derek, Chirnside, I’ve read less about but actually met for one day of the Pratodialogue and as a result I’ll be helping to evaluate a new online course with him later. I didn’t know they knew each other and worked ‘just down the road’ in New Zealand. Small planet.
Anyway, I wanted to blog Derek W’s diagram depicting four stages of online participation which may supersede the old cartoons which are sometimes wheeled out, dating back to the dark ages.
Derek’s Blog: Participation Online - the Four Cs
These are all very positive practices and outcomes, which illustrate an ideal rather than typical progression. There’s not much room for disappointment, withdrawal, the spectacular flounce, overboiling frustration, unrequited help, incessant vacuous chat, pointless circular argument, and all the rest of the rich tapestry which goes to make up the human environment online. Well, perhaps some of these are not so common everywhere. The Motivation/Behaviours/Outcome structure is clear and seems useful, but I’m not sure about the four C’s themselves as headings. ‘Commentor’ is ok for a made up word, but Commentator doesn’t have the right connotations to me. I’d probably add an intermediate column for the “mad newgrouper” phase of behaviour from people who, filled with enthusiasm and imagination for the potential of online collaboration want to keep on creating more and more online spaces without regard for the effect of dilution upon levels of interaction. But that doesn’t begin with a C.
German Edublogs November 14, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : pratodialogue, blogs and community, edublog , add a commentCan anybody recommend some German Blogs or Edublogs?
The reason why I’m asking is because I’m spending two weeks as a guest in a small course about educational design with a group of students based in Munich, although this part of the course is in English for some reason. I was invited by Patricia Arnold whom I met at the Prato Dialogue last month. So one of the things we are doing is to collect together some German blogs as way of both exploring the medium itself and that of self directed learning about the topic of Educational technology and design. Patricia has pointed to a favourite:
which thinks about the latest developments in e-learning used both in higher education and the corporate sector.
Update 1 :
Patricia suggested that having read “The Zen Art of Teaching” in English by Peter Baumgartner, 2004 his blog in German is worth a subscription.
Update 2:
Marion offers www.strukturnetz.de/blog/ about adult education and e-learning. The del.icio.us tagroll is appreciated.
More contributors to thank November 12, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : blogs and community , add a commentIt was just under two months ago when I last thanked people who have contributed to this blog by leaving comments, and since then I seem to have posted 36 new entries.
Two conversations may be worth revisiting because of comments added much later.
1) The controversial Sellaband discussion to which contributed Johan Vosmeijer, Managing Director of the company concerned, has had 3 new interesting viewpoints commented in November. The site has been in the news recently since the first band has hit the $50k threshhold, and can only gain more attention as the download aspect of the site comes onstream later.
2) And “Thinking of community feed mixers” has been visited by two people advocating Blogbridge. Thanks for that.
Here’s the full list of people to whom I am very grateful for their recent comments:
Two interesting studies in progress November 11, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog, COP, Wiki , 2commentsI was asked by Warren Crosbie if I know of any papers which refer to any relation between Communities of Practice and Folksonomy. Warren himself, has an advanced wikispace called Tagunity.
I knew that Linda Hartley had researched folksonomy more than me, and she came up with a link to “The Medium is the Message” as a pdf file of a Thesis Proposal by Martin Kloos, I don’t know if that helps, but through truncation I’ve had a look at Martin’s Blog, “About my masters thesis, ‘Web 2.0′ and Communities of Practice…”
That looks like a valuable blog, it’s a shame I can’t read Dutch more than about 17.5%. The thesis proposal however is in English. I wonder why that is ?
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
