Introduction

In Project Oekonux there has been a long discussion about setting up a Wiki for the project. Also several attempts to establish a Wiki have been made. Most of these discussions took place on the projekt mailing list which is the organizing body of the project.

One of the most important questions was which Wiki software to use. Finally a decision has been made based upon the requirements being raised.

The following lists all the requirements which have been found and lists the alternative solutions for them. One reason for this list is to document the design decisions / choices taken and their basis in the requirements. This way it is easier to

  • understand the decisions
  • change decisions while not forgetting about reasons for the original decision

Requirements

Non-functional requirements

  1. The software must have an active developer community and must be Free

    Rationale:Only an active developer community of a Free Software project guarantees for a constant development.

    Discussion came down to two candidates which met this requirement: MediaWiki and MoinMoin. The following requirements list alternative solutions only for these two Wiki implementations.

  2. The software must be easy to use for people used to Wikipedia

    Rationale:Because of the overwhelming success of Wikipedia many people are used to the way how Wikipedia is operated.
    MediaWiki:Given by definition.
    MoinMoin:The typical use cases need to be identified and a special help page must be created for these users.

Functional requirements

  1. Email notification must be possible sending diffs and other changes

    Rationale:Email notification is a basic requirement for any offline processing.
    MediaWiki:Rumor has it that there is a plug-in for email notification but nobody saw it yet (2005-03-26).
    MoinMoin:Supports email notification as diffs for arbitrary pages and page groups (regular expression). Only notifies on moves and deletion of pages.
  2. It must be possible to limit changeability of a page (for instance for user's pages)

    Rationale:Some pages are private pages or should not be changes for other reasons.
    MediaWiki:Don't know whether this can be enforced technically.
    MoinMoin:Implements access control lists (ACL) allowing for arbitrary rights.
  3. Categories must be possible

    Rationale:With categories can form arbitrary non-hierarchical structures
    MediaWiki:Available.
    MoinMoin:Available.
  4. Navigation panels must be available

    Rationale:Useful to create overviews.
    MediaWiki:Available.
    MoinMoin:Available as Navigation macro for hierarchical structures and as PageList macro for structures based logical expressions on regular expressions over page names.
  5. A version history must be available

    Rationale:Needed to get an overview of the change history of a page.
    MediaWiki:Available.
    MoinMoin:Available.
  6. List of changes for a given user must be available

    Rationale:Nice to have.
    MediaWiki:Available.
    MoinMoin:Not available.
  7. A watch list must be possible reporting about the latest changes for a given set of pages

    Rationale:Nice to have.
    MediaWiki:Available.
    MoinMoin:Can be simulated by email notification.
  8. Automatic links by using CamelCase (aka WikiWords) must not be the default

    Rationale:CamelCase makes sense only in certain language. In particular German is a language where automatic CamelCase links are not too useful.
    MediaWiki:CamelCase words never create automatic links.
    MoinMoin:The NoCamelCase plug-in makes this the default.
  9. Support for other than the standard Wiki syntaxes like reStructuredText must be available

    Rationale:All Wiki languages suck so support for more sane syntaxes is a very useful thing. In particular support for reStructuredText being a powerful language and a good candidate for a standard ASCII based markup language.
    MediaWiki:There is no support for any other syntax than the MediaWiki syntax.
    MoinMoin:Offers several syntaxes by the concept of parsers. Among the available syntaxes are reStructuredText and LaTeX.
  10. Arbitrary attachments must be possible
Rationale:Nice to have to attach arbitrary data to a page. In particular it makes possible to include material not marked up in the Wiki syntax.
MediaWiki:Unknown but probably available.
MoinMoin:Available.
  1. Shortcuts for links must be available
Rationale:In particular it is useful to be able to reference entries in the Oekonux mailing list archive as easy as possible.
MediaWiki:Implements this by templates.
MoinMoin:Implements by InterWiki links.
  1. Page templates must be available
Rationale:Page templates are a good way to support policy decisions by offering standard templates for all page types.
MediaWiki:Not available.
MoinMoin:Available.
  1. It must be possible to revert page changes
Rationale:Useful to undo unwanted changes.
MediaWiki:Available.
MoinMoin:Available.
  1. It must be possible to know who did a change in a page
Rationale:Nice to have.
MediaWiki:Available.
MoinMoin:Available.
  1. Offline usage must be possible as far as possible
Rationale:

Not everyone is always online so offline facilities are generally useful. Offline usage includes

  • a push feature for change notification
  • browsing
  • editing
MediaWiki:

Not available. At most email notification is available.

MoinMoin:

Email notification allows for monitoring changes and in principle the diffs can be used to update a local copy. A local installation of MoinMoin only needs Python and MoinMoin so it is easy to accomplish. Because MoinMoin uses a file based storage scheme it is at least easy to update a local copy in short online phases for offline use so at least offline browsing is available.

  1. Pages must be locked during they are edited
Rationale:Page locking prevents parallel editing of a page which is useful in a highly frequented Wiki.
MediaWiki:Not available.
MoinMoin:Editing a page locks it for 10 minutes and the lock can be renewed.
  1. It must be possible to edit sections of a page
Rationale:Makes parallel editing of a page less dangerous which is useful in a highly frequented Wiki.
MediaWiki:Available.
MoinMoin:Not available.

Requirements for policy choices

  1. Pages standing in a certain close relation to a certain other page must be possible in a sane way

    Rationale:There are several ways in which a page can have closely related pages (e.g. discussion pages). It makes sense to have a uniform way to express this relation.
    MediaWiki:Implements discussion pages as one a special type of closely related pages by suffixing Discussion to the namespace of a page. For other closely related pages there is no fixed implementation.
    MoinMoin:By making sub-pages possible all types of closely related pages can be implemented by some fixed names being part of a policy and supported by page templates.
  2. Structuring of content must be possible by a page hierarchy

    Rationale:The maintenance policy may decide to have a page hierarchy as a structuring principle.
    MediaWiki:Implements a top level structure by namespaces and allows for structuring otherwise.
    MoinMoin:With sub-pages arbitrary hierarchies can be build on any level.
  3. Sub-Wikis must be possible

    Rationale:The maintenance policy may decide this makes sense.
    MediaWiki:Not available.
    MoinMoin:Could be done in a page hierarchy on any level.
  4. Underscores and white-space in page names must be possible but insignificant

    Rationale:If the maintenance policy decides that underscores and white-space may be used in arbitrary ways the software must be able to reflect this.
    MediaWiki:Unknown.
    MoinMoin:Underscores and white-space is significant.

OekonuxWiki/Help/Requirements (last edited 2006-08-11 18:07:16 by StefanMerten)

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