In the grand scheme of things, do ratings of Wiki-sourced content work?
Traditionally, ratings systems are a mechanism that provide a quick, painless, and easily deployable way of soliciting and collecting opinions from a community of users. The ratings can be thought of as a combination of 3 values: the item being rated, the person providing the rating, and the ratings data itself. For content that is more static in nature, there is much less chance of ratings data becoming obsolete due to the underlying content of the page changing.
In other words, my opinions about the quality and accuracy of the information on a Web page that doesn't change are probably going to still be valid in the future (unless my initial ratings data was skewed by a misunderstanding of the information upon first encounter, but even then I should be able to rectify that by updating my original rating).
However, in a more dynamic and fluid environment like a wiki, the content is much more likely to have multiple edits applied to it as the content evolves, and my ratings for past revisions might not necessarily be applicable to present/future revisions of the content. In this type of scenario, what value do ratings bring to the table and how should their life cycle be managed? Do we take the ratings data at face value with no respect to the time line of revisions? Or should ratings be a more fluid data set that is respective to time (for example, only ratings that were acquired between revision X and revision Y are included in the aggregation for said revision)? Should wiki ratings systems only apply to ratings of contributors and not their individual contributions?
We'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
Happy computing.
Michael Beaver | 17 March 2008 03:33:32 PM ET | Raleigh, NC | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
The Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net) server has been restored. This is one our of servers used for Notes client access to Lotus forums such as the Notes/Domino forums.
For information about connecting to our public server for accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."
Craig Lordan | 14 March 2008 10:06:44 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
We have been experiencing ongoing hardware problems with Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net), which is one our of servers used for Notes client access to Lotus forums such as the Notes/Domino forums. We are working to resolve the issue, and in the meantime, we ask that you use our other public Lotus Domino server Notes2/NotesWeb (notes2.notes.net).
For information about connecting to Notes2/NotesWeb or accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.
Craig Lordan | 14 March 2008 10:15:00 AM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
We are aware of a problem that does not allow Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 users to use the advanced search form to search our discussion forums. The problem is caused by an incompatibility between Internet Explorer 6 and the code used to measure our Web site traffic. The code is owned by another team, and we are working with them to resolve the issue.
In the meantime, there are workarounds to allow you to search our forums:
1. Use the search bar located in each forum view. Although the search bar provides only basic functionality and no advanced search options, it continues to work in each Web browser that we have tested, including Internet Explorer 6.
2. Use either Firefox 2.0.x or Internet Explorer 7. No search problems have been reported with either of these browsers, so if one or the other is available to you, we recommend that you use it until the issue with Internet Explorer 6 is resolved.
We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and thank you for your patience while we continue to work on the issue.
developerWorks Lotus team | 3 March 2008 02:41:54 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Check out this cool new technology from alphaWorks Services: My IBM Redbooks that lets you create custom IBM Redbooks:
My IBM Redbooks is a Web 2.0 mashup that remixes IBM Redbooks. It uses many of the most popular IBM Redbooks, enabling you to create customized books based on your interests and needs.Chapters can be merged from any of the available IBM Redbooks, allowing you to create a personalized book for anything from an end-to-end solution consisting of various chapters from multiple IBM Redbooks to a book with only a few chapters of interest.
Similarly, the IBM Custom Content Assembler, which we blogged about previously, does much the same thing, but with product documentation and learning content. My IBM Redbooks, however, use only PDF format for the output.
Tara Hall | 27 February 2008 11:00:00 AM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
If you haven't visited Lotus Labs recently, then you may not have heard about IBM Custom Content Assembler:
IBM Custom Content Assembler helps you to easily find and organize information and store it in a topic cart where you can compile the topics into custom output in the form of HTML or PDF. You have an option to search for and assemble general technical content as well as learning content. Combining and ordering the topics allows you to create a customized content set which you can print, view in a browser, or save locally. With an editor, you could incorporate the HTML file into other HTML content, customize the file, or edit it.
In other words, you can create your own custom documentation from existing product documentation and education materials by selecting your topics, organizing them, and then outputting them to PDF or HTML format. It's that simple.
The initial launch of this application includes Lotus Connection technical and learning content. Try Custom Content Assembler and let us know what you think. Learn more about Custom Content Assembler from its Lotus Labs page on developerWorks Lotus.
Tara Hall | 21 February 2008 06:15:00 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
As some of you have already discovered, we are experiencing problems with Notes1/NotesWeb (notes1.notes.net). The problem is related to a power issue. We are working to resolve the issue, and in the meantime, we ask that you use our other public Lotus Domino server Notes2/NotesWeb (notes2.notes.net).
For information about connecting to Notes2/NotesWeb or accessing our databases via your Lotus Notes client, see our article, "Viewing developerWorks Lotus in its native Notes format."
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.
The developerWorks Lotus team | 20 February 2008 01:20:52 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Our colleague Steve Castledine has just posted a detailed and helpful presentation about the Lotus Domino 8.0.1 blog template. Steve is the creator and maintainer of the Domino blog template. He also developed the new Domino wiki that we have on the site.
In this presentation, he goes through all the changes to the template, most of which are on the Notes client side for easier blog authoring and better control over the more advanced and administrative portions. On the Web browser side, major changes include a new skin in the current Lotus Connections style and a Dojo rich text editor for Web authoring.
Craig Lordan | 31 January 2008 09:00:00 AM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
This blog entry is off the topic of IBM, Lotus, developers, or even celebrity news. But I'm wondering if anyone would like to help me out.
I am looking for funny or silly business meeting agenda ideas. They can be real business meeting agenda ideas that turned out to be funny, silly, or downright strange or that would never apply in an IBM internal meeting. For example, imagine attending a business meeting with agenda items such as "Miller Lite: Less filling or tastes great?" or "Care and feeding of your pet llama."
My task at hand is leading our group's all-hands meeting. As our group and Lotus itself is emphasizing social software, community content, wikis, blogs, and so on, I thought it would be fun to have an opening icebreaker where I explain our meeting's agenda was determined via the community. It wouldn't be the real agenda, but a list of silly agenda items that will be just hilarious. I hope.
Assuming I get any ideas, I'll post what the "faux agenda" was in the next week or so.
Craig Lordan | 30 January 2008 02:30:00 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
Lotus blogger and creator of BlogSphere, Declan Sciolla-Lynch has an idea that we highly endorse:
The idea is called 'Forum Friday' and it is very easy to take part. All you need to do is go to the developerWorks (Notes.net) web site and pick one of the many forums that are available. Have a look through some of the questions and pick one to answer. Write up your answer on your own blog and then reply in the forum with a link to your blog entry.
What do we love about this idea? Aside from the extra site traffic that this may cause, we know that many of you don't always find answers to your questions. Although this is no guarantee that your questions will be answered, you can be assured that business partners, application developers, and system administrators -- in short experts -- are looking in our forums and are willing to offer their expertise to help you out!
There are so many great resources out there on the Web from our forums to the many, many Lotus blogs to the new wikis that are being created. All these mechanisms are just that -- mechanisms for you to find information, to share information, and so on. No one of these mechanisms is better than any other, but none of them succeed without a community to contribute to them. Visit our forums, read the Lotus blogs, and contribute your expertise to our wikis!
Thanks Declan for a great community-building activity! (Now, check out Declan's blog.)
Tara Hall | 29 January 2008 03:37:00 PM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
