[Air-L] AoIR Wiki Was: A suggestion for reading lists and syllabi

Wed Aug 7 20:39:42 PDT 2013

There really is no reason we can't. Alex's main criticism was loss of
people over time willing to maintain it.

If someone's willing to give me access to the wiki backend
tonight/tomorrow, I'll be more than happy to update it (given Ben's
optimism that the updated infrastructure will be spam-proof) and start
setting people up with accounts.

---

Alexander Leavitt
PhD Student
USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
http://alexleavitt.com
Twitter: @alexleavitt

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 8:21 PM, Michael Zimmer <zimmerm at uwm.edu> wrote:

> I want to express my strong preference for the organization to have its
> wiki on aoir.org domain, controlled by us, and not monetized (and
> web-bugged) by third parties.
>
> Currently on http://aoir.wikia.com/ I'm confronted by a Skylanders
> advertisement, Mazda banner, and a "Naked and Afraid" video commercial. And
> that's just on the top of the page....
>
> There are also 8 tracking bugs/cookies being added to by browser.
>
> I don't understand why we can't host MediaWiki and lock down editing so it
> doesn't get overun by spambots. I've had MW on my own site for years, and
> by requiring a user account to edit (and I control who gets user accounts),
> there's zero spam.
>
> $0.02,
> Michael
>
>
> --
> Michael Zimmer, PhD
> Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
> Director, Center for Information Policy Research
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> e: zimmerm at uwm.edu
> w: www.michaelzimmer.org
>
>
> On Aug 6, 2013, at 1:14 PM, Alexander Halavais <halavais at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Alex et al,
> >
> > I think you list my main pluses for a hosted solution. And I
> > acknowledge the main advantages to self-hosting with MediaWiki. As I
> > noted, many have volunteered to maintain the wiki, and many have
> > failed to follow through. I'm not naming names, because there is no
> > blame to be taken up here--but it's work that generally gets pushed to
> > the back of the queue, particularly when people have to be going up
> > for tenure ("I owe my tenure to my awesome wiki gardening" said no one
> > ever), or looking for a job, or breathing. In other words, we are not
> > more reliable than outsourcing the work, and so we've looked for
> > managed solutions in a number of areas.
> >
> > If there is a very strong feeling among a community of contributors
> > that we should be using MediaWiki over something like Wikia, we could
> > look a managed solution like Cloudways. But I think it makes more
> > sense to go with a platform that is more user friendly to those
> > without experience editing a MediaWiki (e.g., Wikipedia). If the ads
> > are an issue, we could buy our way out of them. But for me, they
> > aren't *enough* of a problem for that.
> >
> > Frankly, I don't want to be a pessimist, and I am excited by the
> > enthusiasm around building the wiki. I also am weighing the present
> > enthusiasm against many years of people saying they wanted to work on
> > the Wiki (content-wise) but few actually contributing. My suggestion
> > would be that we build it on Wikia. If there are people regularly
> > contributing, and there is consensus that it makes sense to bring it
> > back under local control, and someone on the Executive is willing to
> > agree to take on the burden of managing it, then I'll be happy to
> > migrating the content. But until there is the commitment to the
> > content, I think Wikia is a good interim measure that allows us to
> > test the waters.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Other Alex
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 9:24 AM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Just to throw in a bit of discussion: Alex, I would definitely like to
> know
> >> your thoughts on Wikia vs. our own install. Obviously spam is one issue.
> >> Easy of use (ie., markup language) is probably another. On the
> our-install
> >> side, I can think of three arguments: 1) not relying on a 3rd party
> (issues
> >> of access, especially if Wikia goes defunct somehow) 2), supporting
> >> open-source software, and 3) no ads.
> >>
> >> Personally, I'm still for the wiki.aoir.org install, but by creating a
> Wikia
> >> page without some kind of 'official' support of the org, I'm concerned
> >> efforts will be divided across both wikis (well, that is, if we can get
> new
> >> accounts on our own wiki...).
> >>
> >> I'm happy to volunteer, btw, to be the point person for helping create
> new
> >> accounts for people that need them.
> >>
> >> ---
> >>
> >> Alexander Leavitt
> >> PhD Student
> >> USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
> >> http://alexleavitt.com
> >> Twitter: @alexleavitt
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20080421002111/http://wiki.aoir.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
> >>> is a pretty good version of the prior wiki.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 8:45 AM, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Great Job Alex,
> >>>>
> >>>> I guess the http://wiki.aoir.org 's heyday was probably back in
> >>>> 2003-2005.  It was and is a good idea to have a wiki, spamming aside,
> >>>> and
> >>>> yes i do still help maintain it sometimes on the old url.  It would be
> >>>> good
> >>>> to find a way to migrate some of the content from the old site to the
> >>>> new
> >>>> site though. I paid for some of of the content to be added to the wiki
> >>>> by
> >>>> one of my center assistants back in the day, the lists of researchers
> >>>> and a
> >>>> few other things.  Those sorts of things were handy and drew some
> >>>> traffic
> >>>> at the time.  However, they slowly became dated i guess.
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> >>>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers
> http://aoir.org
> >>>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> >>>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >>>>
> >>>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> >>>> http://www.aoir.org/
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> jeremy hunsinger
> >>> Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
> >>> Virginia Tech
> >>>
> >>> www.tmttlt.com
> >>>
> >>> ()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
> >>> /\                        - against microsoft attachments
> >>> http://www.stswiki.org/  sts wiki
> >>> http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/  Transdisciplinary
> Studies:the
> >>> book series
> >>>
> >>> I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn
> how
> >>> to
> >>> do it.
> >>> -Pablo Picasso
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> >>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> >>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> >>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >>>
> >>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> >>> http://www.aoir.org/
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > --
> > //
> > // This email is
> > // [ ] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
> > // [x] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
> > //
> > // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
> > // http://alex.halavais.net
> > //
> > // Please attribute any stupid errors above to autocorrect on my phone.
> > // (But I probably was typing on a keyboard.)
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>