CoLab Feedback

This side is meant for collecting feedback about the CoLab. Please add your feedback at the top of the list and sign your comments with your signature (~~~~)

Basic Feedback and Discussion

CC-BY license: How does CoLab's CC-BY license relates to restricting pages to specific user groups?

• We've discussed that today. In principle the CC-BY-Reference just says that the author must be called if some phrase of a CoLab Wiki article is quoted. Citations from access-denied sites are surely not uncomplicated as regards the fact that the readers won't be able to reproduce the content of the quoted issue unless they are members of the restricted sites. Although we are sure that the removal of the CC-BY-Reference is not necessarily required. Moreover the removal of the reference would be a giant administrative effort because it's not an unusual case that access-denied pages turn into open-access sites by the revision of an issue or the progression of a project etc.. (Juliane 17:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC))
• Juliane: according to my information/interpretation, your statement is wrong. CC-BY approves the rights to disseminate (share) and modify (remix) the information (see MPDL License). Thus, whoever can access a user-restricted CoLab page could copy its entire content, revise the information and publish it somewhere else by providing a reference to the source. There is only a slight chance that this will be done, though. --Inga 19:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
• Inga: Yes, you're right. I know that CC-BY allows everybody to copy and rehandle the whole text. Only the author of the original issue must be called. Thus it's important to handle private texts or sensitive topics with care. What you have already mentioned is, that there is only a bounded use quoting or rehandle an access-denied page because of the difficulties in providing the reference of the source. So we are not really sure whether a removal of the CC-BY-Reference on access-denied pages is really necessary. What do you think? (Juliane 08:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC))
• Yeah, it's quite unlikely that somebody uses an access-restricted page in a CC-BY sense and I don't mind keeping the CC-BY reference. Still I would suggest to reformulate the decision rationale. BTW: The CoLab edit-page currently states: "Please note that all contributions to MPDLMediaWiki are considered to be released under the CreativeCommons Attribution 2.0 (see MPDLMediaWiki:Copyrights for details)." Unfortunately, there is no Copyright page existing. Maybe it would be a good idea to create this page and provide the details over there? --Inga 13:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
• I think to create a page which provides the definite details as regards the copyright theme is a great idea. I will worry about it. Thanks for your thoughts and ideas Inga :) Juliane 15:21, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Toolbar: why is our mediawiki installation only offering a limited toolbar? It looks like others get more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Toolbar#MediaWiki_Edit_Toolbar --Inga 12:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Feedback concerning the update to MediaWiki 1.12: Please submit problems you discover or questions that occur or ... here:

• I haven't noticed any difference - which is probably a good thing to say :D -- Inga 16:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
• Today I recognized a weird unsteadiness clicking on Newest Pages and Recent Changes in the navigation box (sidebar) when I was not logged in. The first 1-3 attempts I was directed to No Access but afterwards it worked even though I hadn't logged in in the meantime. Can anyone else try this (when not logged in!) to try and reproduce this error? --Tanja 08:04, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Source highlighting still required (see CoLab_Plug-in). Another page where this feature would be helpful is Talk:PubMan_Indexing --Inga 15:27, 19 February 2008 (CET)

Highlighting/promoting of content - please submit your ideas here! (Implemented ideas will be cancelled)

• News box on the Main Page
• RSS feed for recent changes
• RSS feeds for articles - RSS feed not easy to find, but available via page history
• hint of the day
• open for comments
• integration with mpdl blog

Privacy Policy: we wait for rules from MPG central administration regarding wikis in MPG. --Ulla 11:31, 19 November 2007 (CET)

Language Policy: quoting from the main page: Contributions can be in english or german. Please have in mind, that contributing in english, you might reach a bigger audience - I would suggest though to switch completely to english. I find it already a bit confusing, having a mix of german and english sites (and even mixed on one page - like here) --Christina 10:04, 30 August 2007 (CEST)

Wir haben vor einiger Zeit festgelegt, dass die Sprache frei wählbar sein soll, um CoLab möglichst für viele Teilnehmer/innen offen zu halten. Daraufhin wurde obiger Satz in die Policy eingefügt. --Monika 16:23, 11 September 2007 (CEST)

Ok, here a my reasons for questioning the language policy: a) Given that there are people who understand exclusively either german or english, IMHO they won't find it more useful, because there is no obvious way to know which sites are german and which are english (some pages have english titles, but german content). b) The language-divide is not along topics (which is what users would be interested in), but along the initial author's preferences. c) I also believe that in our 'professional domain' virtually all native german speakers are able to read and contribute to english websites. but NOT vice versa. d) Judging from my own experience, i think people would prefer to work in a (linguistical) coherent environment, even if it's not 'oxford-english'. e) This will also help maintaining a clear terminology when talking e.g. about technical issues.

To sum up, i believe this author- instead of user-oriented view will not increase the number of participants. I was making the comment above because i thought now might be a good point to evaluate this policy. --Christina 12:30, 19 September 2007 (CEST)

i agree with christina in mostly all points..still, having in mind the language problem identified during cooperation with librarians in pubman project (english language was definitely a barrier for communication), we considered this rather free policy. fine for me, to keep the current "policy" (which is actually a recommendation for english) on pubman pages, and find another for the rest of pages.--Ulla 14:01, 19 September 2007 (CEST)

hm, well, if there is already a defined user group that is better served with german.... Would it make sense to tag pages with "English" or "German" (categories)? --Christina 15:12, 19 September 2007 (CEST)

I personally like the idea of language categories, but is that solving the problem? At least, we would have a possibility to separate the pages --192.129.1.76 00:14, 20 September 2007 (CEST)

Language and access related tagging/categorizing: Even though I do not know how urgent the problem with the bilingualism still is (at least at the BT the issue came up again...) I think it would be worth a try to go with the language tagging. Even if this won't solve the problem that there are only pages that are either German or English (and no translated pages), we would get a clearer picture of the relevance of each language (that is to say: what and how much content is written in German). I propose to create two language categories and just assign the relevant articles to them.

I'd like to combine this tagging/categorizing with another issue that came up in the recent past: The issue of not knowing to which pages access is restricted. Similar to the categorizing in "German" and "English" pages, I'd like to make categories for the pages with and without access restriction. What does everybody think? Thanks for contributing --Tanja 14:04, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Moved Threads

User Group Access: discussion moved to talk:CoLab Usergroups --Inga 18:15, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

Open problems with calendar plug-in, see Talk:Calendar --Inga 15:21, 19 February 2008 (CET)

Open Issues: Technical and administrative aspects

Priority "high"

Email notification: Recently the email notification for watched pages is not working properly. Some users are not receiving notifications for all changes on watched pages. This does not seem to be a user preference problem. Spam protection reasons seem to be unlikely, too. Maybe the solution can be found here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration_settings#Email_notification_.28Enotif.29_settings ?--Tanja 08:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Log-in Redirect: After logging in, the user is offered the possibity to return to Main Page. This redirect has to be changed to the page visited before log-in. Probably some adjustment of the special page Userlogin has to be done...? --Tanja 08:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC) (By the way: this is already working in the internal TWR wiki.)

Log-in confirmation: add note for new users to be added to existing user groups. --Ulla 10:53, 19 November 2007 (CET)

Priority "middle"

Copyright Policy: Add a Project:Copyrights page which is linked from every edit mask (see below). Check http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Copyright for an example --Inga 19:46, 18 September 2007 (CEST)
task owner: Ulla

Priority "low"

Time: The automatic created timestamp in the list "recent changes" is incorrect with the actual time (the timestamp for the signature fits) --Kristina 08:10, 17 October 2007 (CEST)

Today, I noticed that the user preferences include a section about date&time settings. This allows you to define a time "offset", i.e. the number of hours the local time differs from server time. After setting this value to 2:00, the timestamps in recent changes are corrected. Anyway, changing the server time might be more appropriate. --Inga 12:11, 23 October 2007 (CEST)

Recent Changes: To check if this function can be set to "Main" by default --Inga 10:39, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

Das ist eine sehr gute Idee - so könnte man Änderungen auf Userseiten ausblenden, was einem Feedback aus einem der CoLab-Workshops auf der BT entgegenkommt. Auf der Recent Changes Discussion Page bei wikimedia gibt es schon einen entsprechenden thread - vielleicht antwortet ja mal jemand...--Tanja 12:04, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Actually - I just thought about the issue once more and would like to point out the issue of vandalism in this context. In the interest of detecting vandalism in all namespaces as fast as possible, the coverage of all namespaces in the recent changes default view should be kept...? --Tanja 12:21, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Solved / Closed

Suche nach Kategorien-Seiten: Problem: Kategorien-Seiten werden zur Zeit als Einstiegsseiten in Projekte verwendet, Bsp. Category:PubMan. Bei der Suche nach PubMan findet man aber die Category-Seite nicht. Auch über All Pages finde ich die Kategorien-Seite nicht. --Kristina 11:35, 25 July 2007 (CEST)

Die Suche ist standardmaessig auf den "Main"-Namespace eingeschränkt, evtl. könnte man den auf die "Categories" erweitern? --Inga 10:31, 26 July 2007 (CEST)

Das Einstellen der Namespaces, in denen standardmäßig gesucht werden soll, kann von jedem Nutzer individuell vorgenommen werden. Hierzu muß man auf der eigenen Preferences-Seite (auch erreichbar über den link "my preferences" im Bildschirmbereich rechts oben) unter "Search" eine entsprechende Einstellung vornehmen. Ganz easy! --Tanja 12:14, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Möglicher Workaround: Die Kategorien Seiten werden nicht mit Inhalt versehen, sondern es wird eine Normale Seite mit dem gleichen Namen wie die Kategorie erstellt, die dann den Content beinhaltet und auch unter der Kategorie zu finden ist. Siehe Organizing Pages--Kristina 13:40, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

Priority: low (workaround works so far) --Ulla 10:53, 19 November 2007 (CET)

Mit der beschriebenen Möglichkeit, die eigenen Such-Einstellungen anzupassen (s.o) und mit der aktuellen Organisation der Seiten und Portale, denke ich, können wir dieses Thema schließen... Cheers--Tanja 12:14, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Informationen zur "All Categories" Seite: Auf dieser Seite erscheinen nur die Kategorien, denen mindestens ein Artikel zugeordnet ist. Dies führte bisher leider zu einigen Verwirrungen. Wäre es möglich, einen entsprechenden Vermerk auf die Seite zu setzen, damit die User nicht denken, das bereits angelegte Kategorien ohne Artikel wieder gelöscht wurden bzw. fehlerhaft angelegt wurden? --Kristina 09:18, 10 August 2007 (CEST)

Die Seite All Categories ist eine vom System generierte Special Page, die meines Wissens nach nicht editiert werden kann. Ich bin jetzt übrigens einfach mal dazu übergegangen, nicht genutzte Kategorien tatsächlich zu löschen. M.E. sollten Kategorien immer nur dann angelegt werden, wenn sie tatsächlich gebraucht werden, d.h. beim Editieren eines Artikels, der zu dieser Kategorie gehören soll. Deshalb schließe ich dieses Issue jetzt mal ganz frech... --Tanja 11:39, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Formatting of editing for pubman func spec pages - for func spec pages, editing should be possible in colored types. Extension of wikiwyg necessary? tbchecked with Malte. --Ulla 11:35, 19 November 2007 (CET)
task owner: Ulla (to check with malte) and and lars

The <font> can be used to provide texts in various colors. The Warming Up has been extended by Tanja accordingly --Inga 17:04, 29 January 2008 (CET)

Search: The search engine and results are somehow weird! Searching for "aspb" returns a hit, but "isi" does not - even there is a trip report with the string in its title --Inga 10:55, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

another example: page EScience_Seminar_2007 includes the string "MPG-AAI" but none of the search terms MPG-AAI, "MPG-AAI", mpg-aai, aai produces a hit. Mapabe 15:48, 28 January 2008 (CET)

Looking the search problem up I found out that it is not possible in MediaWiki to search for strings with less than four characters. I don't know why this is (and I am really irritated...), but at least it explains the "isi" and "aai" phenomenon. maybe this explains the mpg-aai problem as well, since they are two merged three-letter-words...? Does anybody know if we can outsmart this configuration? Do you Lars? Tanja 09:27, 30 January 2008 (CET)

I just did. Now also 3-letter words are indexed for fulltext-search. Maybe the mysql-programmers are somehow addicts to 4-letter words :-). However , now also the 'MPG-AAI' and the 'isi' are found via searching. Bartosch 11:27, 30 January 2008 (CET)

MPDL Logo auf der linken Seite oben: Meine Erwartungshaltung waere, beim Klick darauf auf die MPDL homepage zu kommen (und nicht auf die CoLab Einstiegseite). Der Link zur MPDL homepage ist auch wichtig, da aus meiner Sicht die CoLab Seiten "komplementaer" zu den offiziellen MPDL Homepage verstanden werden sollten. --Uat 12:15, 24 July 2007 (CEST)

Ja, sehe ich ähnlich. Entweder man erweitert das Logo um eine Unterzeile "CoLaboratory" oder man verlinkt auf www.mpdl.mpg.de. Letzteres empfiehlt sich aber jedenfalls momentan noch nicht, da die Seiten immer noch nicht aktualisiert sind. Ich hoffe, dass ich ab 15.9. Zeit finde, dies zu verbessern. --Monika 09:38, 26 July 2007 (CEST)

Das Logo ist jetzt nach http://www.mpdl.mpg.de verlinkt Lars 11:19, 27 November 2007 (CET)

Diffs: no longer possible for not logged-in users--Inga 10:11, 10 January 2008 (CET)

Problem solved by Lars. --Inga 23:03, 10 January 2008 (CET)

Create information page on searching: The search page links to an article "Searching MPDLMediaWiki" which is currently not existing --Inga 11:04, 10 October 2007 (CEST)
task owner: Nicole done --Nicole 13:50, 23 November 2007 (CET)

Problem: DNS Resolving http://colab.mpdl.mpg.de: Peter Wittenburg as well as Anke Bruns reported problems with access CoLab. According to Vlad, the problem needs to be solved by IT department --Inga 13:49, 21 August 2007 (CEST)  : Das Problem auf dem GWDG DNS Server sollte inzwischen behoben sein. --Monika 16:40, 22 August 2007 (CEST) 16:38, 22 August 2007 (CEST)

Vorschlag: "All Categories" Seite besser sichtbar machen duch Aufnahme in die linke Navigationsleiste --Kristina 17:27, 25 July 2007 (CEST)

Fände ich gut, wenn sich das technisch machen laesst. --Monika 09:40, 26 July 2007 (CEST)

Alles ist machbar ;). Einfach einen Link auf Special:Categories aufnehmen --Inga 10:27, 26 July 2007 (CEST)

Feedback Seite besser sichtbar machen: Eventuell kann man Feedback Seite auf die linke Navileiste setzen, um sichtbarer zu werden? --Kristina 11:35, 25 July 2007 (CEST)

Done --Inga 10:41, 4 September 2007 (CEST)

Page Naming: As the CoLab is currently growing it might be reasonable to discuss some naming "proposals", e.g. that project/solution specific pages should include a reference to this project/solution in its title. I also would recommend to rename a range of existing pages (like Search, Submission) to follow this proposal--Inga 15:16, 27 September 2007 (CEST)

For PubMan pages, the re-naming is in process. --Ulla 15:48, 8 October 2007 (CEST)

Is this something, we would like to note down somewhere, e.g. in the editorial policy? --Inga 10:56, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

Whenever dates are part of page names, they should be encoded in a way that sorts well lexicographically, i.e. not 22102007 but 2007-10-22.Robert 10:00, 4 November 2007 (CET)

agreed in meeting 19th nov to both points. Will be added to editorial policy and communicated by mail

editorial policy revised --Inga 17:35, 19 November 2007 (CET)

Protect pages from changes: Mediawiki provides some basic functionalities to prevent pages from eding and moving, see mediawiki manual --Inga 03:12, 12 September 2007 (CEST)
task owner: Ula, check with vlad and lars

Is this still an open issue? As I see it, every Sysop can protect pages by clicking the protect-label on top of the page. This prevents chosen pages from being changed by non-sysop-users. Is this functionality sufficient or does anybody need a more differentiated protection? --Tanja 11:27, 22 April 2008 (CEST)

Done long ago --Yves 13:56, 14 January 2014 (CEST)

Unsolved / Rejected

IP protection: Hermann Schier requested an IP protected area in the MPDL colab. Please check options and inform Hermann about them. --Inga 13:49, 21 August 2007 (CEST)

Leider ist es vorläufig nicht möglich, IP protected areas anzulegen (kein tool in der Mediawiki-Installation verfügbar). Einzige Option derzeit: Anlegen von Usergroups. --Monika 16:45, 28 August 2007 (CEST)

SysOp Account for FIZ - so that they could administer their usergroup themself? --WikiSysop 17:38, 29 October 2007 (CEST)

Won't fix. Externals have to check with MPDL sysops for addition

Questions and Answers

Date Categories?: What is the reason for having dates as categories? (Just wondered while I had a look at All Categories) --Christina 09:56, 30 August 2007 (CEST)

These date categories are used by the calender plugin, please discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages there --Inga 15:09, 30 August 2007 (CEST)

Collaboration Laboratory

Creative Common

Coordinated Universal Time

Central European Time

Really Simple Syndication

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Central European Summer Time

Bibliothekstagung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Technology Watch Report

Publication Management

MPG-wide Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure

Max Planck Digital Library

Domain Name System

Informationstechnik

Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung Göttingen

Internet Protocol

Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe