[LON-CAPA-users] Can we have a wiki?

[Chris King]

I think a LON-CAPA wiki would help increase the number of users by lowering
the learning curve.  We could put tutorials on the site, fix documentation
errors and omissions, and point out bugs to new users, so they don't get
frustrated rediscovering them.  Having a wiki does not seem unusual:  Moodle
has one at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Main_Page (powered by Mediawiki);
Drupal has one (powered by Drupal). 

Mediawiki, which runs Wikipedia, is open-source, and fairly easy to install
(on Ubuntu, it's automatic).  Copyright and license require some thought.  I
recommend doing what Wikipedia does:  copyright is retained by the
contributors; license is Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.  That
license allows the content to be sold, so, for example, I could include the
documentation in a lab manual and charge students for the whole package.
That license would also allow content to be freely transferred between
LON-CAPA & Wikipedia (since they would both have the same license).
Allowing contributors to retain copyright, rather than transferring
copyright to, e.g., the University of Michigan, prevents a change in
license.  (The website could not shut down, then reopen with all the content
relicensed under a commercial license.)

Doable?

Chris 

Christopher King
Chemistry Department
Troy University
Troy, AL 36082