Thread Subject: Re: default tab on the wiki

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Tue, Oct 17 2006 8:55 AM

On 10/17/06, Jim Tobias < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi Jared,
>
> For all pages in the wiki, is it possible to default to the Discuss tab
> rather than the Edit tab? This might encourage new users.

I have to side with Bruce here. I don't think anything is gained by
making "discuss this document" the default. By default, it's just a
blank page. I think it would be better to have the viewers see the
actual content and documents first, then they can add discussion if
they want to. Where that discussion occurs does not matter a whole
lot. On some of our task force pages, we've added the discussion right
to the document. The same has happened on many of the Theme pages. The
discussion page can be used if users want (and probably should be for
more formal documents). And of course this is the primary purpose of
the mailing lists.

An example of how the discussion page could/should be used is at
http://teitac.org/wiki/Announcement_10.13.2006

We can promote discussion of a document by linking to the discussing
page from within the document itself (Talk:Document Name) and adding
some initial content to that page. If the nature of the discussion
page is such that it is not supporting discussion and the mailing
lists aren't working, a threaded forum could be set up for
subcommittee use, though this is one more level of
usernames/passwords.

I guess I'd rather just see how things fall into place before forcing
a new convention upon users in the hopes that it will work better.

Jared

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