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Educational settings sit in-between since they offer some pre-existing context
but with less demanding constraints than companies.
Consequently, our premise is that, unlike other environments, corporations
have all, personal organigrams, documentation practices and task schedules
that frame both wiki users and wiki editing. The term “wiki scaffolding”
is introduced to denote a wiki installation where some categories, templates,
permissions, etc are initialized at the outset to mimic the corporate background.
This includes structural concerns (e.g., how are wiki pages arranged along
which categories), communication means (who is going to be notified of what),
permission needs (e.g., who is allowed to do what), etc. So far, this background
is patiently replicated by wiki users that, in some cases, are forced to go down
to code.
Wiki scaffolding implies not only being knowledgeable about the wiki engine
(e.g.,
MediaWiki
) but also installing third-party extensions. This can certainly
discourage users. Lawyer, architects, medical doctors are all profiting from wikis.
Hence,
our aim is for wiki scaffolding to be made accessible to non technical
people
(
who
)
that collaboratively agree ( how) on a blueprint for the wiki
(what).
To this end, we propose the use of a
Domain Specific Language
(DSL).
DSLs are reckoned to enhance the quality, productivity, maintainability and
portability while permitting domain experts understand, validate and develop
the DSL programs themselves [7]. Additionally, collaboration and easy sharing
can be promoted by using a
graphical DSL
(as opposed to a
textual DSL
).
Specifically, the collaborative mandate suggests capitalizing on existing tools
for supporting brainstorming. A common way of recording and expressing
brainstorming sessions are
mind maps
. A mindmap is a diagram to express
ideas around a central topic. Now, this central topic is “wiki scaffolding”, and
mindmaps constructs are reinterpreted to denote scaffolding concerns.
This paper presents the
Wiki Scaffolding Language (WSL)
(pronounced
“whistle”).
WSL
is built on top of
FreeMind
[1], a popular, open source tool
to create mindmaps. Hence,
WSL
expressions are mindmaps. Our bet is that
users might already been exposed to mindmaps and even to
FreeMind
, hence
reducing the learning curve for
WSL
. These maps (i.e.,
WSL
expressions) are
then compiled into a set of
MediaWiki
directives whose execution generates the
wiki scaffold.
MediaWiki
is one of the most popular wiki engines [2].
This paper is organized along the design and use of
WSL
:
WSL
analysis
(Section 2),
WSL
design (Section 3),
WSL
realization (Section 4),
WSL
verification (Section 5) and
WSL
enactment (Section 6). Discussion through
related work is presented in Section 7. Some conclusions 8 end the paper.
2WSLAnlys
This section identifies the scope and main abstractions behind
Wiki Scaffolding
(WS). The aim is to capture the company's work practice and settings as long
as their impact on wiki operation. A main outcome of this analysis is a
feature
diagram
that describes the commonalities and variabilities of domain concepts