Wiki Team/Roadmap/Use Cases

Collapsible table sections

To make a wiki page more usable with extensive content, collapsible sections enabled through table extensions are available.

Trac ticket:#612 has been entered with links to sources.

The advantage of a collapsible section versus a linked page is that the content can be viewed or hidden in the context of the the original page or the opening view of a page. This can be a big advantage when there is surrounding information that helps complete the circumstances for the topic. A use case could be a design review where one wants viewers to see an outline of alternatives on their initial view (in order to set a preview of what is available) and then the viewer may click the expansion toggle to explode or hide the particular content.

It would operate in a manner similar to the table of contents, but without the restriction of using the headers as links and without the shifting of context away from the current view of the page.

WYSIWYG/M editor

Having an easy-to-use editor to alternate with MediaWiki markup would enable more people to edit comfortably in the wiki.

When should we implement?

Joining a development project too soon can lead to diversion of resources to support incomplete applications. For example, as of September 2009, the FCKeditor extension fails to support MediaWiki 1.15.1, our current version.

Google Spreadsheet

See Widget:Google_Spreadsheet. Lacks convenient edit link. Author has implemented this feature in a new release.

Pros

  • convenient for data presentation and analysis
  • advantages of Google formatting and functions

Cons

  • distribution of data
  • outside of search scope
  • limitations of Google formatting
  • loss of wiki page/context formatting & editing

The FCKeditor, should it mature a bit, looks promising for simple data and addresses the Cons.