23 Sep
2009
23 Sep
'09
3:56 p.m.
Hi Carsten,
On Sep 23, 2009, at 11:22 AM, Carsten Heyl wrote:
Hi anyone!
Here is my transcript of trying to find out something about XWikis
quaility.
Thanks a lot for this email. I'd really really like that we receive
more emails like this. It would help improve the xwiki quality a lot.
1. I started at the home page.
Hey looks quite good. Not too much info, main "Products" presented
well,
good navigation.
Looks promising.
2. So take a look at the Products presented so prominent.
Well done. Good overview about the products.
3. So what problems do people have with XWiki, lets take a look at
the FAQ.
What the ****?
We want to use Wiki for structuring Information and XWiki itself does
not get a simple FAQ right?
(Compare thet to http://ant.apache.org/faq.html)
Hmm... maybe they got overwhelmed lately?
No, latest changes date back to March of 2009.
1. The "F" in FAQ stands for "frequently", so a split betwenn FAQ
and
QA may be useful.
2. 204 Questions without any structuring? (compare to e.g. the ant
link above)
3. 73 unanwered FAQs?
OK, so the XWiki don't care much for questions and usability?
Hmmm can't believe that, lets try more.
I don't really understand the pb. I understand you'd have liked to see
only a few items and ordered by category but here you have more:
- more entries
- ability to search for anything you want
Re FAQ vs Q&A, yes we have this ambiguity. It's a wiki and people adds
their questions there instead of using the mailing list/forum as
mentioned on the page...
OTOH if people asked themselves these questions it means others could
also ask themselves the same questions so it's not too bad.
I don't have any idea to improve this. Maybe it's just about defining
the expectations better about what users will find on this page.
Any help from your part here would be welcome.
3. So what does it feel to use xwiki? Any sandbox or
demo available?
Hey great, main navigation contains a "Playground", lets give it a
try.
Reading ... "second generation" (sounds promising) and "how to
start"
(they guide me, good!).
So lets start.
"Configuring your wiki by clicking on the 'Administration' link at the
top right."
Hmm, no "Administration link", only "Log-In" and
"Register".
Any info on the Log-In-Page? No.
Does "demo"/"demo" work? No.
Any info on the Playground-Startpage? No.
Hey there is a "sandbox"-Space, lets dig. Hmm, no way to edit, just
Menus "Show" and "Print".
Maybe problems due to a brand new update? Hmm.
Need to register? Lets try.
"This will allow you to edit pages, once the admin gives you
appropriate
rights." OK, lets try nevertheless.
4. While waiting for the mail, lets explore the playground via "Quick
Links".
Index - Hmmm, velocity errors and endless "Loading" ...
What's New - RSS Included and my Registration is in, too. Looks good.
Hmm Adminstrator changed XWikiPreferences, maybe the cause of my
problems?
Taking a look at the page.
"To edit preferences, please use the Administration page. " - If I
only
could ...
Blog - Lets add an Article - OK, needs Log-in. No Registration-EMail
yet :-/
Calendar - just some velocity code on the page, no calendar. :-(
Photo-Album - Yeah someone managed to upload a photo.
Tags - "To tag a document, edit it and enter the tags". OK, later. (No
Registration-EMail yet)
2 of 6 give errors right awy, hmmm gets disappointing.
5. While waiting for the mail, lets explore the playground via
"What's New".
Mail - Error number 4001 in 4: Error while parsing velocity page
XWiki.Mail Wrapped Exception: Failed to evaluate content with id Mail
JavaScriptExtension - Hmmm looks pretty empty the page, can't figure
out
what it is good for.
StyleSheetExtension - Same here. Maybe thats part of the
extensability,
but where would I find Information about the Extension and how to
use it?
(The Information-Tab on he page does not help me.)
AllDocs - Hmms same as "Index", yeah it's the same page, so does not
work.
TreeView - even more empty than the Extension-Pages
TableView - some endless loading, got bored after 2 minutes waiting
for
"loading" to complete.
Hmmm, not much Information for a "wiki".
This is simply because we have upgraded the version for xwiki.org but
we have forgotten to update the default wiki content for
playground.xwiki.org... You caught us!
We're in the midst of releasing XWiki Enterprise 2.0 today or tomorrow
and we'll perform the upgrade at this point.
If you're interested I'd really recommend you download XWiki
Enterprise standalone version and install it on your machine. It's a
10 minutes job and will give you a better feeling for XWiki.
What we need to do:
- upgrade playground.xwiki.org
- during that upgrade have a special box on the home page of
playground.xwiki.org to explain that this is the standard wiki you get
when installing XWiki and that you need to register to edit pages
- fix the message on the register page that talks about a mail since
you just need to log in right away
My question to the xwiki users mailing list and the
xwiki team.
Does that represent typical xwiki experience?
I hope not but I can see where it went wrong. Fixing the playground
will go a long way fixing most of your issues.
Does that represent the quality of care of the xwiki
developers?
Nope.
Is it worth downloading xwiki and spending more time
digging into it?
Definitely.
In the meantime if you want to read about feature of XWiki Enterprise,
see:
http://enterprise.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Features
Somewhat disappointed but not totally scared (yet :-),
Thanks
-Vincent
Carsten Heyl