This page is written with a Davis-specific slant. For general information, see LocalWiki.org.
The LocalWiki project is an ambitious effort to help other local communities create information hubs as fantastic as the Davis Wiki. Right now, the project has two main components: new software, designed from the ground up for local community usage; and a focused stewardship of individual pilot communities.
"When will Davis Wiki be running the new software?"
While developing software is a major initial aspect of the project, our aim isn't to simply upgrade the Davis Wiki. At first, we have to focus our attention on the initial pilot communities. Davis Wiki is really successful, but people need to see radical successes elsewhere to help spread collaborative local media. Davis Wiki is also quite mature, and if we aimed to immediately support everything on the Davis Wiki or immediately port over Davis Wiki to the new software we would lose focus that would be better spent on the initial pilot communities.
So the plan is to work with one or two pilot communities until they're in a good place. At that point, we'll step back a bit and figure out what functionality and features should be running on the Davis Wiki. We've been building everything to be extremely flexible, software-wise, so if there's functionality we develop for one community that isn't needed or wanted in Davis we can turn it off or alter it. We'll also be able to add new features based on feedback from Davisites who are currently using and editing the Davis Wiki. It's also worth noting that our current grant funding is explicitly for new/pilot communities, so this is another reason why our initial focus is on new places. In a nutshell: we have limited resources and insane ambitions.
"How can I help?"
Up until last week we've been 100% focused on writing new software. If you're a programmer and want to help out, please do! Everything is entirely open — information on all that is here. We're going to be doing a big open source outreach push in the next month — and hopefully hold a few hackathons in Davis and SF.
We're now shifting gears a bit as we figure out the first set of pilot communities. More on that in a week or so.
More later, post questions here and I will answer. You can also shoot me an email at [email protected]. —PhilipNeustrom
What's the plan as far as migrating Davis Wiki to the new software? —TomGarberson
I was thinking we could have a nerd hackathon in Davis (on the events board here) to work through some Davis-specific software issues. Hoping we can get a demo site running sometime shortly before then so folks can poke around and we can figure out what we like, what we need and what we need to change. I'm also thinking it'd be good to migrate over Sacramento first as it's less active but also familiar enough to Davis folks that we can get a feel for things first. —PhilipNeustrom
What about non-nerds or those who can't make the meeting — is there a way for them to give input too? —CovertProfessor
Yes! We'll have a bigger, nearby wiki migrated (like Sacramento) very soon and the demo DavisWiki site up for that exact reason. —PhilipNeustrom
Looking forward to giving it a spin on Sacramento. Would it be worth doing a brainstorm prior to the hackathon to work out exactly what kind of Davis-specific software issues need to be addressed? That'd also let those of us who aren't as software-savvy (nerdy or not) help out, as well. —tg
Or maybe a group editing / play-around with the new stuff once the demo site's up? What do you think would work best? In terms of Davis-specific, there's two types of things I'm thinking: 1) Stuff that holds up a migration 2) Things folks want, or want changed, within attack-range. #1 includes, off the top of my head, the comments functionality (which Ryan in Rochester has been working on, but we would need to discuss here as it's been a controversial topic), the events board, footnotes and just general 'solidness' of the whole shebang. #2 includes, well, anything :) But things like "how should user notification work?" / anything that that might be specific to needs here. —PhilipNeustrom
Yeah, #2 are the sort of things where it'd be worth getting a community conversation going to figure out what needs doing prior to the hackathon. I doubt we'll get anything resembling consensus on how to handle comments, but notifications are the perfect example of something that could use brainstorming. —TomGarberson
Hi all...I created this page to discuss the migration (when / if) to the local wiki software.
I just checked out the DentonWiki, which looks amazing. Anybody have any news on this?
Thanks —aroach12
We're migrating over smaller sites first (SacWiki.org is the first nearby one). Being so close to Davis, we're hoping the SacWiki can be a good way to get some feedback. We'll be making a big SacWiki launch soon and hopefully get a bunch of great feedback then. There's two relatively small software blockers, as explained a bit above: implement an Events Board and figure out what we want to do with the Comments macro/functionality. —PhilipNeustrom
Thanks for the update. —aroach12
