Wiki is up and running

[Martin Ryan]

The wiki is up and running http://wiki.olapforums.com. I've taken Jim up on his excellent idea and called it Olapedia.

MediaWiki was the winner on the day as GoDaddy kindly did the install for me. Seems pretty easy to use - I haven't broken it yet anyway.

Happy wikking (or whatever the verb is).

Martin

[jim wood]

Is it a shared logon with this site or do you need to create a new logon?

Jim.

[Alan Kirk]

Is it a shared logon with this site or do you need to create a new logon?

Jim.

You need to create a new one, I believe. My one for this Forum didn't work, and it allowed me to create a new one with the same user name.

Note that even logged in, there doesn't seem to be any way of adding a new topic yet. (You can edit existing ones.) I dropped a line to Martin about it but it's almost 7pm in NZ so he probably hasn't seen it yet.

[Martin Ryan]

Yes, you do have to create a new login as it's a separate third party tool.

To create a new article do a search for the article you want to write about it. It says "can't find it, do you want to create it?" Go from there.

Martin

[Alan Kirk]

Yes, you do have to create a new login as it's a separate third party tool.

I just went to the http://www.olapforums.com page for the first time. (Previously I'd been coming via the link that had been posted in the old Forum.) I noticed that you have that on there, which is a good idea.

Oh, I also noticed: "OLAP Forums is a non-denominational site for all users of OLAP."

It's true that we're a broad church... but equally we also know what the One Trur Faith is.

To create a new article do a search for the article you want to write about it. It says "can't find it, do you want to create it?" Go from there.
Martin

A-ha! Excellent, I'll give that a try in the morning. (I left my blather on my work computer.)

[Alan Kirk]

This isn't really specific to TM1, but it's where the Wiki thread is so what the hey.

There's one little eccentricity in the Wiki software that you may want to watch for when writing your articles. Single word internal links don't seem to be case sensitive. Multiple word links do. If you enter a multiple word topic using different capitalisation to that of the article title, and then format it as an internal link, it'll show up in the red text of a non-existent link. Click on the link, and you'll go to the "Topic does not exist yet" page.

By the way, I'm not sure who's doing the entries on Excel, but whoever you are, just FYI you aren't logged in. Only your IP address is showing as the author.

Oh, and nobody touch the article for TM1 Web. I'm working on that.

Heh.... Heh.... Heh....

{Grins evilly, starts the whetstone rotating, grabs medieval double-bladed battle axe...}

[jim wood]

The best way to create a page is to add a link to page that already exists. This also ensures there is a navigation path to it. The pages you have created are hard to find. I only found them via the recent updates page. When you create a link on page for a new page that doesn't exist it goes red. clicking on the link will give the abaility to then add content to the new page.

[Alan Kirk]

The best way to create a page is to add a link to page that already exists. This also ensures there is a navigation path to it. The pages you have created are hard to find. I only found them via the recent updates page. When you create a link on page for a new page that doesn't exist it goes red. clicking on the link will give the abaility to then add content to the new page.

I'm guessing that that was addressed to me since aside from you, Martin and our anonymous friend with the IP address I'm the only one who's added new pages recently.

I picked up on the "link from an existing page" idea (indeed I created most of my recent pages that way), but if this thing grows there's no way that all of the pages will be linked from any once central location. I'd therefore expect that the only way anyone will find anything is by using the search option anyway.

Also you need to bear in mind that what I've posted to date aren't intended to be "stand alone" articles; they're mostly "subsidiary" topics for larger articles that I'm writing. IIS is a subsidiary of TM1 Web, Data Sources is a subsidiary of TurboIntegrator and so on. When the whole family of articles goes up, they'll all be pretty intensively interlinked. Indeed many of them already are; the Title Dimensions one is an example.

[Martin Ryan]

I'm the anonymous friend - I forgot to login.

It appears to be case sensitive, but not on the first character. E.g. olap is the same is Olap, but they're both different from OLAP. I guess that makes sense as if you're talking about a word an initial cap doesn't change the word, whereas all capitals suggests an abbrieviation (the proper word escapes me, I'm sure Stephen Waters will inform me shortly ).

I've found as I've been writing my articles that I tend to use a lot of terms that will need definitions themselves, so I put them in as internal links as I'm going. Hopefully one day they'll all get fleshed out.

Martin

[jim wood]

I wasn't having a pop. Just a "Best Prectice" approach kind of thing. Also does anybody know how to edit the menus at the side? In the wiki versions I have used they are pages that can be editied but I can't find them in this version. I guess it would make sense to have product links at the side with a cascading menu. (Something wiki does very well.)

[Alan Kirk]

I'm the anonymous friend - I forgot to login.

It appears to be case sensitive, but not on the first character. E.g. olap is the same is Olap, but they're both different from OLAP. I guess that makes sense as if you're talking about a word an initial cap doesn't change the word, whereas all capitals suggests an abbrieviation (the proper word escapes me, I'm sure Stephen Waters will inform me shortly ).

Since Stephen W is still our "missing Steve", I'll do the honours; "acronym".

I've found as I've been writing my articles that I tend to use a lot of terms that will need definitions themselves, so I put them in as internal links as I'm going.

Yes, I noticed you doing that; I started to follow your lead on it. (Though admittedly most but not all of the ones that I've created I've already drafted the outline of anyway.)

Although as I mentioned in my reply to Jim, I've gone a bit the other way around; as I discovered terms that needed more detailed explanation, I put those up as articles so that they're there and ready to be linked to when the main articles go up. It means that my articles to date are a little on the eclectic side, but there IS method buried under the madness.

One thing I did notice (bearing in mind that as is doubtless obvious to everyone, I had never contributed to Wikipedia or similar previously) is that we don't seem to have a facility for adding a reference. (I looked in Wikipedia earlier this evening and noticed that they have a button for this that we don't.) Is this something that just isn't turned on in ours, or the nature of the software?

[Alan Kirk]

I wasn't having a pop. Just a "Best Prectice" approach kind of thing.

Oh, no problem; I understand how it might have looked. But as I said in the reply to Martin, method, madness, all that.

Can't help with the menu thing yet, I'm afraid; I'm still getting a handle on doing topics!

[jim wood]

There are various version of wiki. Some do things the others don't. Can you not add a refernce by adding an external link? If not you could always upload any file?

[Paul Segal]

Also does anybody know how to edit the menus at the side? In the wiki versions I have used they are pages that can be editied but I can't find them in this version. I guess it would make sense to have product links at the side with a cascading menu. (Something wiki does very well.)

I believe you can only do this if the Admin has granted you the rights. (It tends to negate menu wars in the more public wikis, I think.)

[jim wood]

The next question I guess is: Who is the admin?. Followes swiftly by: Can I have the access please???

[Alan Kirk]

There are various version of wiki. Some do things the others don't. Can you not add a refernce by adding an external link? If not you could always upload any file?

No, not in this case Jim; I've added a couple of external links to Web pages which have worked fine, but the reference I was thinking of was the one where I described the change to zero suppression modes in TM1 8.3.1. (http://wiki.olapforums.com/index.php?title=View). The reference was to the release notes, which don't exist on the Web anywhere but behind the login walls of Iboglix. In the end I just put the citation in brackets after the main text. Obviously we can't put the release notes up there as an attachment or we'd probably have Cognos lawyers storming the gates.

I was also going to put some references into the Excel article from a book that I have on the early days of Microsoft; if this version of wiki doesn't support referencing, we'll just have to do the "in brackets" thing with any citations which are non-web based.

I haven't tried loading graphics either yet; though that's also because I'm not sure how Iboglix would feel about screen shots of their product going up. I'm therefore going to try to stick to word descriptions as far as possible.