Wiki Announcement (2019-01-10)

Say What?

Template:JfanoteBy Greg FullerTemplate:Jfanote-end

JusticeforAnimals.org is being converted to a wiki, running on the same platform as Wikipedia. You are looking at the new site in an early stage of conversion. After the conversion is completed, the site will be moved from wiki.justiceforanimals.org to justiceforanimals.org, replacing the current site. Because a wiki uses a different URL structure, I will provide URL redirection for most of the posts on the current site so that existing bookmarks and other links to site pages will not break.

Background

Last year a friend put the bug in my ear about using Wiki software for justiceforanimals.org. I let the thought simmer but it kept popping up in my head. I looked at the features of MediaWiki—the software that Wikipedia uses—and did a few edits on Wikipedia to familiarize myself with how things work on a Wiki site. I didn't much care for the aesthetics, but I was surprised about how capable and well suited the software seemed to be for justiceforanimals.org, even without considering the possibilities for a wider collaborative effort.

So I set up an instance and started experimenting, still somewhat skeptical. But the more I learned the more convinced I became. I'm still in the process of rapid discovery, learning about footnotes, table of contents, tables, infoboxes, edit approvals, versioning, user permissions, etc. This immersive experience of beginning the conversion from the old site is allowing me to set up the overall structure for the site and the structure for various types of individual posts.

Take a Look

You can learn about the structure of site by reading the Main Page, which is Wiki talk for home page. The greatest opportunity for outside contributions will be in two new Sections—Fact Sheets and Summaries. Visit the other Section Pages in the Sidebar Menu to see the kinds of entries in each section. See an example of a post that's been converted here.

Advantages

Here are just a few of the benefits of using a wiki site:

Collaboration. The ability to engage other contributors in a more collaborative effort will result in more content more quickly.

Cross-Linking. The wiki platform offers strong capabilities for cross-linking the information between pages and the sections, something that is much easier with MediaWiki. It just wasn't getting done on the WordPress site. With more content and two new site sections, this becomes even more important.

History and Version Control. The platform tracks all edits to a page, allowing any version to be compared with any other version and be easily reverted. WordPress does too, but it's cumbersome and not suited to a collaborative environment.

Richer Presentation. The wiki platform makes it easy to produce a table of contents, citations, nicely formatted tables, information boxes, etc. Some of this was possible before but was not being used to its full advantage because it was difficult. Here it's easy.

Productivity. Since I've started working on this platform, I am impressed by how much faster one can jump in and start writing, editing, and cross-linking. When you see something wrong, you can hit the edit button and fix it immediately. You longer have to go through a cumbersome administrative back-end to get things done. As a result, things get done.

Common Skills. With the WordPress site, in order to contribute, one had to be trained in a system that was specific to that site. Here, there's learning to be done, but it's the same platform as Wikipedia. Help is readily available by searching the MediaWiki site. Wikipedia has proven this can work.

Continuity. I would like for others to not only be involved in content creation and editing, but also in managing the site. I won't be around forever, and something could happen to me at any time. The Wiki platform does what we need it to do without a lot of third-party and homegrown customizations, making it easier for someone to jump in and help with system maintenance, or even take over.

Site Considerations

It's a whole new ball game for how the site is organized and how contributions are managed.

Content Contribution. As more people start participating in creating and editing content, many possibilities exist for how page creation and editing can be managed. Decisions surrounding this are under consideration. Among the possibilities:

• Allow anonymous users to edit pages and possibly create pages.
• Allow all registered users with verified emails to create and edit pages.
• Contribution by invitation. This would result in having a team of contributors, and the team could be large.

This kind and degree of participation would be very difficult with the current platform.

Foundational Articles. As more content gets created, the more foundational information could get lost in the sea. This is certainly not a problem now, as most everything being work on is considered foundational. As the site grows, foundational articles from each section can be flagged as foundational and be given higher visibility.

Template:JfanoteThink of foundational information as the basic things you should know in order to be the most effective advocate for veganism and animal rightsTemplate:Jfanote-end

Copy Editing. Currently, all articles are copyedited by a professional copy editor, Isaac Nickerson. This has resulted in high-quality content. As more contributors get involved, it will be difficult to maintain this standard for all articles.

The platform supports flagging of content based on quality. We can use this feature, combined with an approval process, to make it clear to the user where an article stands in this regard. The goal is to have all foundational articles copy edited.

Outlining. I thought the outline feature would be useful, but it's hasn't generated any interest. That may be because people need to be educated about how outlines can be used. Outlines take considerable work to maintain, and I'm not sure people will use them.

Here's what I'm thinking: put what is now in the "Details" and "Extra" part of an outline into a collapsible box in the article, and have its initial state be collapsed. This would work well for much of what is there now, but it would not work for deeper outlines. Much of the content in deeper outlines can be moved to Fact Sheets.

Template:JfanoteFact Sheets provide support for a variety of assertions that are commonly made in advocating for veganism and animal rights. Each fact sheet consists of one assertion, followed by summarized citations of supporting evidence for that assertion.Template:Jfanote-end

Clipboard. I think that having a plain text version of an article that can easily be copy-pasted without formatting problems is useful. We should keep this feature, but only require it on foundational articles. As richer content that includes tables, informational boxes and such are put into the main article, that text will become even less amenable to copy-paste. The feature will be implemented differently, making it easier to copy-paste small portions of an article.

Visual Editor. A visual editor is available that lets you edit without dealing with wiki notation. Although wiki notation is quickly learned, the Visual Editor would make editing even easier. The feature requires a separate server so it's not a matter of just flipping a switch. I'm working on it.

Moving Forward

A lot of work and thought went into this decision. All the factors would take too long to explain, but I'm confident this is a good move for the site, and for the site's mission.

There's lots to be done, some of which is on the To Do page. This includes improving the aesthetics, which I've already worked on quite a bit. I will be changing the fonts and other parts of the design before GoLive.

I'm excited about the current and future possibilities of being on a Wiki platform.