Wiki Announcement (2019-01-10)
Background
Go ahead, fix my typos and such by hitting the edit icon above.
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 that part of the software. I didn't much care for the aesthetics, but I was surprised about how capable and well suited the software was for justiceforanimals.org, even without considering outside the possibilities for outside collaboration.
So I set up an instance and started experimenting, still somewhat skeptical. But after I got through the initial hurdles, 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 for individual posts.
You can learn about the continuing and expanded vision for the 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, also explained on the Main Page.
Another consideration was the strong capabilities for cross-linking the information between the sections, something that is much more difficult on the existing platform. I'm still in awe about how easy this is with MediaWiki. With two new sections, this becomes even more important.
Only two of the plugin programs that I wrote will have to be rewritten: One for the copy to clipboard functionality, and one to expand and collapse outline nodes.
I have not set up the Visual Editor yet, but I've used it on Wikipedia and it was one of my considerations in moving forward with a Wiki solution. Although Wiki markup notation is quickly learned, the fairly recent Visual Editor will make it even more appealing.
I'm excited about the current and future possibilities of being on a Wiki platform.
