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TRP News - 7 March 2011

March 2011 - Countdown to Launch - 5, 4, 3, Holding

Wiki Stats - End February 2011

February has also been a relatively quiet month in the Wiki. The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 March 2011) has grown to 2644 (previously 2573, 2439, 2144), an increase of just 71 pages. Of these 928 pages (was 900, 859, 817) begin with the letter R and are probably related to a R*v*s individual and 282 pages (259, 244, 213) begin with a number, so are probably a date related gleaning. We currently have 1205 wiki pages categorised as "People" of which 893 begin with the letter R.

Counting Down to Launch

Many thanks for all the feed back received about the Drafts of the Proposed Externally Facing Pages and the pages linked from the table within that page. I've taken on board much of the feed back and have tried to incorporate it into the final drafts, which are now available.

If you've not yet looked at
I'd encourage you to do so. All three pages are accessible PRIOR to logging-in to TRP, just the way a non-member would see them, as well as being visible after logging in.

And Cherie has kindly designed us a logo for use on the Mast Head. So that aspect is now also ready for the launch.

However, some of the discussions round sample pages has raised a significant philosophical issue, which we quickly need to address.

Open Tiki or Closed Community?

What are your expectations of who will be able to see the data within The Reeves Project?

For the past nine months I've been working towards the creation of what I'd characterise as a "Closed Community with a Liberal Admissions policy". Any data entered into TRP would only be available to other community members, but the threshold for joining the community would be pretty low - simply complete a form. The form was deliberately long-winded to dissuade those who were not serious about their Reeves research, but not difficult. The advantage of the closed community is that we know who has access to the data we're sharing, we have shared expectations and we can encourage those who have yet to contribute.

However, as we've been counting down to launch, the issue of providing sample pages to non-members has caused some to ask if we should make ALL of our wiki pages available (read only) to non-members? Clearly the best of our existing pages provide an excellent advertisement for TRP. But all our incomplete work in progress pages and that of our novice users would also become visible by the same token.

And is it just Wiki pages which should be made visible externally? Comments attached to a Wiki page sometimes provide more context to the content of that page. On other occasions they reflect our temporary personal thinking about a way forward. So should Comments also be accessible to non-members? And when we get Forums working again, do we want them also visible to non-members?

And remember, whatever we make accessible to non-members will also potentially be accessible to the search engine crawlers.

So before we go any further, we need to know your preference. Please either privately drop Martin an e-mail or publicly post your thoughts on the wiki page TRP_Open_or_Closed before Sunday 20 March, when I'll summarise the feedback received.

Martin's Month Ahead

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Page last modified on Wednesday 01 of May, 2013 03:21:03 CDT by @MartinB.