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    • TikiWiki - CSM and Groupware

    Posted by wimvincken posts: 60

    The TikiWiki is an amazing engine to add content and to multi-categorize it. That is what I like about the TikiWiki.

    But, as it is called Groupware and CMS, in my opinion, the next version must be focused on that functionality, and not some tweaking or new mods or some fancy stuff.

    I would say more focus on the Groupware abilities, and that means:

    Professional integrated forums

    Forums like SMF (take a look and copy its functionality and implement it in Wiki Forums and you have professional forums)

    More integrated forums

    • The idea of the forums is quite nice, especially the Discuss button. That gives the idea of integration and let the user discuss the wiki page in the forum. But it is too poor, because that is the only possibility of integration.
    • Allow to display on the wiki page how many posts are in the forum (discussing the wiki page) and preferable a list of forum entries.
      • Currently, nobody clicks on the discuss button, because nobody has any idea that someone added a forum entry for that page. When it is visible, everyone will look what is going on.
      • Comments for each wiki page is nice, but it is not as good as forums and it gives more options. Also in this way, forums are indeed integrated with the wiki contents
    • Allow to determine which forum will be accessed for the wiki page. I mean there is currently the ability to set the forum for Wiki pages, but that is only one forum. Allow the admin to determine which forum is the 'discussing' forum for the wiki-page.

    User points

    • Like the points of each user is nice, but absolutely useless at the moment. Unless you connect the point system to the permissions of access of certain content or categories.
    • Points and user groups. That would be nice. You can create user groups, which are based on the number of points a user has
    • Points and categories. The same as the points, certain categories gives access to content with users with a certain number of points

    Friends

    • Friends is nice. At the moment you can invite someone to become your friend. But it is not clear what you can do with it.
    • I assume that you mean with Friends the so called Buddy lists. Look at SMF what they do with Buddy Lists. What could be added to the TikiWiki is the ability to send each other mail (to your friends of course).
    • There is a chat module somewhere. No idea if that chat is working or not, because I could not find it, but I read somewhere that people are programming on the chat (release notes 3.x). The chat (or mini-chat) could use a user list with people in the chat. Your buddy list would be the minimal.

    Users

    • Users are implemented fine in the TikiWiki. You have mods, which tell which users are online. Great, but that is not enough. It would be nice to see where the users are at the moment!
    • It would be nice to see if you are on a page, how many users and who are on that same page.


    Wim

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    Posted by Xavier de Pedro posts: 1817 Catalan Countries

    Thanks for your suggestions, Wim. There are plenty of suggestions, but not enough paid human power to code them.
    If you can code yourself, welcome to make them happen. If not, you can do your best to get funds to have some of your request (by your priority) coded.

    Alternatively, you can add them individually as "wishes" to the dev tracker,
    http://dev.tikiwiki.org/tracker5

    but most coders are pretty busy with many things, and they need to live on something. So if you can help them pay their expenses, you have more chances to have a coder or Consultants code your ideas if they agree with them.

    HTH

    Xavi

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    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee posts: 4656 Japan

    About the forums, I think for most people using Tiki it's more important to have a genuinely integrated forum (same login, editing syntax, search, plugins, categories, tags, comment forms, groups, themes, etc.) than to have one with a best-in-class bells and whistles index.

    About the features like "friends", Tiki doesn't have a single focus or a tightly controlled development plan as many projects do; at the core of the project is the idea that it embodies the "wiki way" in the development of its roadmap and its code. This means people can add a feature and as long as it's optional and doesn't break anything else, it pretty much can become a part of the software. The down side of this is that some things get started but then abandoned when the developer loses interest or whatever. The friends and user points features, etc., (and others like "breadcrumb") are in that category, started but not worked on until they became mature features. It's a lot harder to get somebody else to pick up the development of somebody else's orphaned feature, or even to dump it (since inevitably there will be vocal users who've been using it and want to keep it), than it was for somebody to start it. So I think that's the reason for some of the more questionable features. At least now their status is indicated on the Features Admin page so users can have realistic expectations.

    On the bright side, aulawiki/workspaces is showing lots of promise to bring way more to Tiki in terms of social networking, etc., than these rather trivial and neglected features were capable of, so that's something to look forward to.

    -- Gary

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    Posted by wimvincken posts: 60

    Yes. I'm an almost 50 year old man who has his normal billions of years experience in the development field with bla bla bla.

    TikiWiki is an amazing piece of software and an excellent development effort of a large group of bright people.
    Many features are usable, only a few are not 'finished' (i.e. the friends and user points).

    Since I'm an old man, my development activities mainly consists out of running medium and large development project with hundreds, even thousands of people involved all over the world, from companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, NASA, ESA and many others. Actual development is now quite a hobby with the nice and fancy software technologies out there and the newest methodologies. Quite exciting.

    Development is a large process, where many people are involved with. But with good projects, there is a spearhead, a person who is in charge. A person who is working towards a certain goal, a goal, which must be clear for everyone involved.

    If that is not the case, and the project has money and resources enough, then you might say that the goal is work therapy, a feeling of accomplishment when you finish your small part of the total. And there is nothing wrong with that. It's a pity that I can't come to Spain at the end of this month.

    If I would take over a project like this, the first thing I would take care for is the increase of resources, so that the developers can continue to have a good time. Then the organization; project management, integration and monitoring, the strategical path, the final goal to get more resources and to increase the productivity. So, be happy that I won't be able to take over, huh? Well, at least everyone can freak with a large bag of money!

    -

    That said, a product, which is nice as it is, but is not finished (like the forums, the points and more details) is a product, which is scheduled to die, to be passed by something else, which is doing something similar or better.
    To fragmentize your efforts by working on this, then that and then something else is not the way how a large product like TikiWiki must run and can survive. Everything needs to grow, but it needs to grow on a firm fundament, and that firmament becomes weaker by the day. Finish what you start before starting something new.

    -

    A good idea - a bit different subject - is to adopt the license and not make it free anymore. For personal usage FREE would be nice, but for commercial usage you make an agreement with the one who uses the software commercially, to share in their revenue.

    This sounds maybe harsh, but it is the actual fact that nothing can survive for free.

    If I would manage this project, my priority is getting (read here not hoping to get, but simply getting) the money, the resources to continue.
    I would implement the following.

    Banners and Advertisement

    There is an excellent banner management module in TikiWiki. I would contact advertisers and make agreements with them. From TikiWiki central location it will feed banners for every TikiWiki installation, if the owner like it or not. The owner will not be able to disable the banners.

    In case they don't want, they must pay for a license.

    Licenses

    Millions of hours of development went into the product. It is about time that you guys came up with a license model. Personal use is free (I assume), but commercial usage is not. They pay an amount per year for leasing, not buying. For personal use only one TikiWiki installation is allowed, but not more.

    That means that you need to have a server, which monitors all TikiWiki installations out there and determine the licenses. If there is something wrong, disable to TikiWiki. I wrote many of those license servers and they are easy to implement and very hard to fool.

    The license server is one of the central parts of the TikiWiki network, which can be used again to centralize all kind of things, like users, information, forums, blogs, and and much more and sell services.
    The license server must be able to collect statistics of all TikiWiki installations out there, which can be used for advertisement and other form of income.

    Changed development

    At the moment you have several people working on the TikiWiki. Those are volunteers? Great. But if you want to have real nice stuff going, finished and all, make it interesting for the developers and companies! And that brings a very nice source of income and the growth of the TikiWiki is guaranteed for several years, making resources free to 'fool and freak around'.

    Enable Module development

    Allow companies and/or third parties develop modules/plugins. TikiWiki gets part of the sales; they must have a license to install a module and that is again very easy to track.

    Focused development teams

    Your own developers will work on specific parts of the system, which will lead to rewards (more resources, money, etc). You are going to work for specific projects, like for example, any institute, company, government, etc.

    With other words, you must attract marketing and sales people, product development people, project management, the whole bunch.

    Finally, I don't think that the TikiWiki must be a company or an endeavor. It can still be the same, but it demands in that case a focused leader, who is managing the whole thing from the top. It requires an open mind of everyone involved and an increase of people in the team/project, people like marketing and sales people, people involved in Product Management, and go on like this until the end of times.


    Wim

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    Posted by wimvincken posts: 60

    In a model like that means that every developer in TikiWiki earns money. I think it is worth to make some changes in the organization and the way how TikiWiki works.
    I would say that this would be the highest priority, higher the workspaces or anything fun. It's the way how you get your sandwich, can work on fun projects and earn something.

    Can you image that a developer delivers mods or other development work to the TikiWiki, and earns for years a $1,000 per month or maybe more!? Only because someone did his homework and made the commercial aspect working?

    It would help people like me too. At least I have some real nice stuff coming up, something useful and productive, where I can make money with.

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    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee posts: 4656 Japan

    Just to clarify something that I might not have described correctly, Tikiwiki in principle applies the wiki way to software development. In practice, there is a project board of directors and admin group that guide the project.

    Your development model ideas, related to Tikiwiki, can be only hypothetical. Imposing commercial aspects as you describe might work for some other people and some other project (and it's LGPL software so anyone can fork it and go that direction if they think it has prospects) but this approach would be fundamentally incompatible with most of what this Tikiwiki project is about, I would say, on all levels.

    -- Gary

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