Ensign Wiki

September 19 , 2007

Today I wanted to discuss our collective knowledge and how we might collaborate on sharing this knowledge.  Let me set the stage for the announcement by discussing a need.

Background:

Ensign has had charting software since 1981, and the products we have offered have evolved over the years.  There was a major step in that evolution in the early 90's when we migrated from a DOS based platform to a Windows based platform.  Our Ensign Windows product is still based on that original creation, so it is 15+ years old and still going strong.  This is a long time in the life cycle of software products, and the reason it is still alive and well is because of the constant attention given to making it better.

Initially we documented the product using Word and published printed manuals for an additional charge of $25 to cover printing and shipping.  This material then migrated into Help Documentation, the descendant of which is still accessable in the Help | About Ensign Windows menu.

Then the Internet came on the scene and gained acceptance, we evolved to having web presence and documentation on the Internet on our ensignsoftware web site.   The internet helped obsolete the practice of shipping the product on diskette, and replacing customer data files via diskette and overnight shipping.  And a few years later, we abandoned printing manuals and charging for them.

The web based content continued to grow in its presence and importance, and had overtaken the Help Documentation because the web pages are easier to update, and easier to insert illustrations in the text.   Our web site has grown to 3000 pages with 2400+ images supporting those pages.  So that is a vast quantity of information.

In spite of all that, a couple years ago we started a Knowledgebase for questions and answers, and the input vehicle for adding to this database was e-mail.  So as I and other staff members answered e-mail, we could also groom a copy of the answer into the format of the Q&A Knowledgebase article and add it to the collection.  There have been 1750 submissions, and around 400 deletions, leaving a current collection of 1350 articles, many of which are really excellent as a source of information and training.

Evolution:

As I have worked on major changes to the program this summer, I am feeling increased anxiety over the documentation that naturally lags behind.  The more features I add to the program, or features that evolve for the better, the more places in the existing documentation that need to be updated.  Some new pages need to be written, some need to be deleted, and a goodly number need to be updated with edits to have the text match the program's evolved state, and have the images show new material instead of out-of-date examples.   An example of being out-of-date would be study property forms.   In the Sept 2007 versions, that form has evolved to have new features such as the grid selection box, the scale selection box, and formulas for the averages.   So while the functionality remains basically the same, there is new material that needs some documenting and web pages and help documentation that needs grooming.

Part of the problem of having this information distributed is also that where the original content resides pretty well dictates who it is that has responsibility to do the editing.  The web site master content is on the computers I use, and it happens to be me then, who is responsible for web site content and updating.  The Help Documentation is Kimball's baby, and he does all the writing, editing and updating of that resource, in addition to the ESPL docmentation/manual.   Our support staff also has a small web site and it is up to them to keep it updated.  And since I do the majority of the e-mail for the tougher questions, most of the posts to the Q&A Knowledgebase originated with me.

Occassionally, I will field a question from a user and it basically goes like this: "I have searched your web site for an answer to my question and did not find any documentation, so could you please help me with ....... ' and then they fill in the blank.  Often there is documentation on the topic for the question, but the answer might be in the Help Documentation on the computer, or it might be in the Q&A Knowledgebase, or on the Ensign support site, or on dacharts site, and the user just did not know about these sites or did not think to check them as alternatives before e-mailing his question.
In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if all this distributed information were more centralized, better organized, more easily searched, and more current.

Wiki Solution: 

In pondering the resources at hand, and the nature of the challenge of the documentation keeping up with our ever evolving product, I have come to think that a new medium would help, and that new medium is a Wiki database.  Some of you are familiar with what a Wiki is, and the best example is that of the Wikepedia web site, which is a global encyclopedia project with over 2 million pages and thousands of contributors or editors.  It is an open wiki which means that anyone can make contributions and edits to the wiki pages. That project has been a huge success and is one of the top 20 web sites for traffic, and thus was purchased by Google.

It is the concept that is attactive to me, that there is cummunity participation in the recording of knowledge into a collective database.  Now there is some risk of a wiki being maliciously attacked, but there are tools in place to help overcome that risk.  One characteristic is the wiki makes it easy to recover from an attack by having prior versions of pages on record, so the community can spot the damage and revert to an earlier good version. Another help in place is the ability to restrict who can edit the wiki content..... but this is not used by Wikipedia.

So today, I am announcing that Ensign will implement EnsignWiki which will be a wiki based knowledgebase, and over time will be the centralized location into which current information can migrate.   Eventually I see the Q&A Knowledgebase articles moving to the wiki, and the Q&A database being obsolete.   I see the Help Documentation making a migration as well, and much of the distributed pages on Ensign Support site and many pages from dacharts making the move as well.  The Ensign web site with its 3000 pages will probably have selective movement, in that if it is right already leave it be on the web site.  If it needs grooming, then use that as the excuse to move it to a wiki page so that the staff and trusted users can edit it, and add to it.

Saroj: Howard that's a very exciting announcement... I'll help any way I can.

New Potential: 

Now, lets think a bit bigger on this topic and imagine what new uses the wiki might afford the community.  I have thought of a few, and surely more ideas can be added by the class today.

1. There could be a Users page where you each have a page you maintain to show a photo, a bio, and have a message board where other users could post you a message and it will be there for you to read when you check your personal page.
2. Each chat room or room mentor could have a page in the wiki that documents the etiquette for the room, its philosophy, rules, and examples of the methodology used in the chat room.  For example, Jay West could have a page, Larry Pesavento could have a page, Buffy could have here page.  And these would be a great place to have that room's knowledge added on the topics for the room.
3. Many users have posted exceptional charts well commented with lots of notes about trading ideas.  These have typically gone to the dacharts site, but there they get buried and forgotten over time.   It would be a better solution, in my opinion, if the author of the chart were to start a wiki page on the topic of his chart and methods, and then the chart example and its accompaning text would be preserved, searched, and edited or added onto.  This would be a really power section of the wiki to document the templates and methods used.
4. Templates could be collected from the current diverse locations and indexed.  

You all know where this good information resides, and I am inviting you to go get it, and put it into the EnsignWiki.  I and my staff, and hopefully other volunteers will help with the upgrading of the Ensign documentation.  Instead of putting in the hours of effort to do more of the same, I think the vision of the wiki possibilities make the effort more worth while.  I hope what we end up with in a year from now, will be one of those WOW moments, so glad we started and just did it.   I see the potential, and may be naive as to the problems not yet experienced, but I think we should do it.  So lets get started and all participate in adding to the EnsignWiki.

Considerations: 

I researched various wiki flavors and there are many to choose from.  Based on what I thought were the most important features needed, I have decided to go with the EditMe wiki platform.  It is a commercial subscription site and product.  It received the PC Magazie Editors Choice award a couple years back, and after investigating, I can see why it got the award.

My priorities for wiki selection were as follows:

1. User interface: I considered the WYSIWYG approach to be superior to learning a wiki mark-up language.  I wanted all of you to help in the project, and did not want you to be turned away by the thought of having to learn a mark-up language to be able to make meaningful contribution.     Saroj: good choice.
2. I considered it a must that the product have good access control, to restrict who can edit the wiki.   The EditMe excels in both these areas, and more about access control can be taught as I demonstrate the EnsignWiki.    Kongfuzi: wiki great idea as long as it not hacked.
3. I considered it a real plus if the content was based on HTML tags because that is what I am familiar with, and what my 3000 web pages are designed around.  So the idea of cut and paste of the existing sounds really nice as opposed to have to process through a converter to change the source from HTML to a unique wiki markup language.

So, EditMe won out over the dozen or so wiki platforms considered.  Now are you ready to see what I have done.... it is not much.... but it is a start and you hopefully will catch the vision of it all.

The EnsigWiki will be at this URL:  http://ensign.editme.com

Access: 

Anyone can view the wiki content.  However, only registered users can edit the content, and that is to try to avoid being spammed or hacked.  On the page that shows, click the How to Register link.

http://ensign.editme.com/Register

As stated on the Register page, there is a Show Menu link in the upper right corner.... click it to have the tools menu.  On the tools menu is a link to Register, and login, etc.  Once you are logged in you will have menu items for editing the page, adding a new page etc.   The registration is going to be moderated, meaning an administrator will get an e-mail for your request and they have to approve the registration.  I invite who ever wants to be able to contribute to the wiki project to go ahead and do the registration.   I will approve a bunch of you right now.   I would like to try this step right now so I can get a feel of the process myself as an administrator. 

Kongfuzi: oh we have to be approved, ok

Yes kongfuzi, that is one approach to try to eliminate spammers and hackers and keep our precious knowledgebase clean and healthy.  If you have submitted a registration, raise your hand with the CTRL+Q keys to show ? icon on the nickname list.

Shar: To register does one send an email to ensign2?

No, you use the registration form on the wiki tools menu.   Several of you should be operational now.  You must use the external Internet Explorer to register.  Do not try to do so from with the Ensign chat room as that does not seem to work, probably because it lacks some support for Java scripts.  Remember, it is a moderated registration and I or another administrator has to see the request and approve it.

Saroj: are there any restrictions on User Name or password?

Yes, you must use only letters and digits.  Do not use other characters like _.    Example:  al_gorithm will fail because of the _ character.

Also, as you use the Wiki editor, some features pop up an input window.  I found in my Explorer I needed to allow pop-ups from the edit.com site.  Then it all worked as intended. It is not pop-up adds, etc, but it is related to forms used for the Java scripts

cyndc: my first tries was with Firefox - that could be the difference - IE was successful.

Ok, another good clue.  EditMe did mention firefox and one other as restricted browsers for editing, so might also apply to registration.

Flag: Howard I had no trouble logging in from Linux Firefox.

price: Howard, I am using Opera Browser for my registration.

Saroj: Is there a profile page to change notifications, password, email address, etc.?

Yes, that is your Preferences link on the tools menu.  

Editor: 

On the tools menu you see a Page section and an Edit section, and further down a Site Index section.  Click on the Site Index link.  This lists all pages (wow... 3 of them) in the wiki.  Click on the Test page.  Now click on the Page | Edit link to open the editor.

You should see this edit toolbar at the top of the page when in edit mode.   This is a WYSIWYG interface, very much like a word processor.  You can change font to bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, left edge, center, right edge etc.   You will have to allow pop-ups for the scripts to work so you can do the edits.  Stuff like the table properties is in a pop-up window.   There is alot that can be done here, and for more detailed instructions you can click the How to Edit link on the home page.

URLs can be added and it then shows the image on that site, or you can upload the image to the folder for the page, and then the image will be a local display.  The latter has the advantage of not losing the image if the other site happens to be down or the file there is deleted.  I will have some images uploaded to the wiki, and others will be uploaded to existing Ensign web site.  Neither is in jeopardy of losing the content.

I invite more changes to the Test page, please.   When the edit is done, click the Save button on the bottom of the edit form.  Now for those who have HTML pages, and you want to port one over to the wiki, here is what I think the process is.  Perhaps there is a better process I don't know about.

1. Open a new page and change the setting on the page when opening and naming it to the Plain Text bullet.  
2. Then in the editor you can paste from the clipboard all the HTML content from the original page between the < beta > tag and the </ beta > tag.
3. Edit any of the URL links that might been a prefix to be a full URL.
4. Then click the save button.

I ported my What's New page in a test and it worked beautifully.  I had several links on that page that were local paths such as Help/Filename . htm and these needed to be made complete by adding:    http: // www . ensignsoftware . com /

Saroj: I like that idea.. but not sure how to do that if already in a font from another document

Don't worry about it saroj.  The suggestion is to avoid changing fonts and sizes for personal preference.  It would be better to have consistency in the design than to see 20 different preferences by 20 contributors

Shall I explain more of the buttons on the edit toobar?   2nd row has buttons for cut, copy, paste, paste just text by stripping formatting tags, paste from word document to convert word formatting to the equivalent html tags.  The next button with the a is for stripping all formatting.  There are buttons for Find, Replace, bulleted list, number list, unindent and indent.  Tip:  Do a mouse over and the buttons have hints.

There are buttons for subscript, superscript, undo, redo, add hyperlink, remove link, insert anchor tag for hyperlink to a place in a page, insert image,  insert date, insert time, change font color and font background color.

3rd row is insert table, and then edit row and cell properties, or add more rows ore remove rows, add more columns or remove columns.  The bar is a horizontal ruler, add special character like the copyright character, add an emotion icon, add a flash video, toggle guidelines, print, show full screen or normal size, preview and spell check.  I do not think spell check is implemented, or it may just require and additional plugin.

Attachments: 

Pages can have attachments and a good use would be playback files, or template file.  The page could talk about it, give useful information on downloading, and then have the directory of attachments available at the bottom.  If you upload an image, it is likely you do not want it to show in the listing at the bottom soyou check the Hide option.   You would then insert the image after it is uploaded using the edit and the image button on the dialog form the list box for available images will have your upload to select.  It is really pretty straight forward, and easy.  In my testing I did not find an easy interface for adding, editing content, or uploading images.   Many wikis were much more complicated processes or restrictive in the page presentation.

Saroj: I cut and pasted a selection from MS Word... text came through ok but not the image... might have to put images in separately and use a hyperlink...

On the paste from Word, there is a clipboard paste selection special for Word documents.  This paste button has the small W in the image.  It does a special job of converting word markup into the underlying html markup.

Saroj: ahh.. ok.. I'm trying to put in an image now... by itself... I'll let you know

In the edit you can type in the url to reference external site, or you can use the Attachments button to upload the file first and then have a local image to add.  Either way.  Uploading lessens the chance of the image being deleted on the external site.

Saroj:  It would be great to be able to insert an entire word document with images... rather than to have to add them back in one by one after attaching them all.

I agree saroj, but I do not know the answer if there is another way or a better way.

Saroj: I'll tell you what would help a lot would be if there were a place to store images on an FTP server so that I can do snaggit, mark em up, FTP them and then cut and paste the link into the "insert image" form... or... if someone can tell me how to create a URL to access my own file system... I think there is, but don't know how.... the "attach file" is very cumbersome for all but just a few images

FTP is possible, I think, because they talk of using applications to upload and download.  So I just need to find the answer to uploading using Snagit.  I do know the path will be the following:  ensign.editme.com/files/pagename/filenameuploaded

So if you have a page named Kelter, then the images uploaded to that page will be in the /files/keltner/ folder.   The uploads go with the page and not to a general catch all folder like /images/

Saroj: Howard do you mind if I contact tech support to see if there is any way to do that?

Please do, or better, go search the help.editme.com site for that topic.  Might be answered already in their wiki.  There are tips and tricks on the edit.me site, and customer documentation. 

Save:

At bottom of editor is button to save the changes, and describe the changes in a summary line.   Check the Minor Edit box if the changes were trivial and not worth notifying by email the users who have the page tagged for being watched.

 Saroj: Howard, how do we delete a page so we can play around but not clutter... (like the one I just added) LOL

You tag it on the page preferences for Delete.  It does not delete just then.  It requires an admin like me to check the pages to delete list and approve their being deleted.  That way a hacker does not go through and delete our wiki.

Videos:

I also watched flash videos on the editor, etc.  Shall we watch one now?

http://www.editme.com/FlashDemo2

http://www.editme.com/FlashDemo3

Click on these links to watch videos.

Shar: I still didn't catch what the Anchor does?

It allows a link to jump down into the middle of a page tto the anchor location instead of just to the top of the list.  I use this on my New Features page to have links to specific anchor points, like to #Fonts anchor.

My site uses the public view, registered edit security mode.  Registered users can create new pages and upload files.  Now you know all about the measures being taken to preserve the integrity of the wiki from spam and hackers.

We will be adding to the content structure and invite your contributions to create useful pages and edit existing ones.  I did testing to have pages with my flash videos and it all worked.  So I was pleased.  I probably will still keep the vidoes on my existing web site so that it does not count as traffic on the wiki site.  So for the time being, I intend to blend the two together and have cross linkage between both.

Philosophy: 

Now let me talk a bit about philosophy. 

1. If you are not willing for your material to be in the public domain.... DO NOT contribute it.  I have no control over who reads it or uses it.  So just think that what you contribute is now public information.   Don't talk if you have a secret.  It is that simple.  Don't expect me or others to protect your intellectual property.  We cannot do so if you publish it in the wiki or on the internet in general.
2. EXPECT your contribution to be edited.  If you cannot tolerate peer review or edit, don't contribute.   This is public domain and not copyrighted material.  The whole idea of a wiki is for community edit.  It will happen, expect it, and don't be offended when it happens.  I have no control over who does editing other than to not permission someone.   So far today, a dozen or so of you were given my trust and the trust of the community to be polite, and responsible in what you do in the wiki.  Don't abuse our trust, or you will lose the privilege.
3. It will take time for the wiki to grow.  It will grow as more discover its value and use it and want to help in the project.  I will benefit by your help, and the more help I get the more my time can be spent on program feature creation instead of on writing documentation.  Yes, I realize that initially the documentation has to start with me because I am the one who knows the details of the design.  But in spite of what I know, you all know something more, and can help by adding to the content or correcting my materials that are confusing, or you can add your own content.
4. There is a powerful Search capability in this wiki.  Lets look at that page's document:  http://help.editme.com/Search
   You would show the tools menu, and select Site | Search, and in the input box enter keywords.   You can have additive keywords and subtractive keywords.  See the last line of the bulleted selection for an example.  This is a very powerful search capability.

I think it will be hugely decreased my documentation burden.   The wiki edit is just as easy and fast as my FrontPage edit for the web site so I can publish in wiki now instead of in FrontPage.  The WYSIWYG was an important part of my decision for which wiki platform to embrace.  EnsignWiki will be good... just need patience and practice and effort.  The vision of its potential is very attractive to me.

Saroj: this is very cool... I've been wanting to start a site for my family members to post stories and pictures etc... I'm going to sign up myself. I've been playing with computers since 1963... its just astounding to see what's possible now.

I like how the tools menu can be hidden when one just wants to navigate and thus have full screen for the page content. 

Thanks for attending class.  We are off to a start, a walking start, and might be up to trotting by next week with this project.  There is a lot of information to learn on the editme site for how to do things.  All they teach applies to how you edit or navigate in this EnsignWiki.   We can use comments and new pages to post the material we learn.   Post it in the EnsignWiki so it starts to make documentation like this page you are reading.