atw: Re: User-editable web help

Not this kind of system but experience with wikis tells me that users are 
extremely loath to edit content they don't themselves own. Your idea of a 
staging area seems brilliant and necessary. Wikis have comment capability but, 
here again, they're unlikely to comment. Any interface that allows global 
viewing of the editor's tag (usually included along with a time stamp) will be 
likely to discourage user editing. Just my 2c.

-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hedley Finger
Sent: Wednesday, 1 October 2008 10:44 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: User-editable web help


I am currently using Aptana Studio, an open-source IDE for AJAX web-site 
development built on Eclipse and employing the server version of Eclipse 
help.  Aspects of Aptana's help system are stored locally but topics 
download from its web site.  Noticing an [edit] link next to a topic 
title, I clicked it and found that it brought up a wiki editing environment.

This is a novel idea -- users writing and modifying the help.  It seems 
to be possible to add new topics as well as edit existing topics but how 
to get them into the table of Contents (or nested bookmark list) is not 
obvious.

This would appear to be an excellent way for the documentation to be 
continually aligned with users' needs.  But it would probably require 
some sort of staging for editorial style and quality review.

Has anybody produced a user-editable help system like this?  Any war 
stories?

Regards,
Hedley

--

Hedley Finger

28 Regent Street   Camberwell VIC 3124   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Fax. (call phone first)
Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558
Email. "Hedley Finger" <hfinger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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