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Custom Metadata for Wiki

Page Overview

1 Requirements
- 1.1 Current Situation
- 1.2 Suggestion
  - 1.2.1 Define Advanced Metadata in Wiki
  - 1.2.2 Edit and Show Advanced Metadata on Wiki Page
  - 1.2.3 Display All Pages Tagged With Selected Metadata
2 Status
3 Additional Information
4 Discussion
5 Implementation

Notice: This feature request uses the outdated term "Advanced Metadata" for what is now called "Custom Metadata" ("Benutzerdefinierte Metadaten").

1 Requirements

1.1 Current Situation

A wiki is a good tool to build up a knowledge base and collecting information and data in an open way [1]. But with a certain amount of information and wiki pages it is necessary to structure even wikis and offer easy approaches to find information quickly (besides using the search) and to see relations among pages and entries.

The current feature wiki is a good example for such a wiki. Each wiki page uses a kind of tags to indicate the related component, status or funding of a feature. At the time being this is done by using wiki links to overview pages and to list all these pages manually. This is very time-consuming in a big wiki and also not very certain. This feature request is suggesting how this problem could be solved by extending the wiki through the use of advanced metadata.

1.2 Suggestion

A solution for the problem described above could be the use of advanced metadata, their aggregation within lists and presentation within the page content. The advantage of advanced metadata is that they already exist in ILIAS (for courses, categories, glossary terms...), that they are flexible to define and use and that they can only be set by users with write permission to the content - unlike tags that can be set by anyone.

1.2.1 Define Advanced Metadata in Wiki

A wiki should have the option to use Advanced Metadata (AM) within the wiki and its pages. This is a new setting in the wiki settings. Unlike the current implementation of AM in courses or categories, the AM in wikis will always be set for the specific wiki as these AM are very much content related. An simple import / export from one wiki to another would be appreciated. The entire AM definition and administration requires WRITE permission to the wiki (Edit Settings) and has to be separated from Edit Content permission.

Enabling and disabling AM support for wiki in wiki settings
Defining AM sets in the wiki as key-value sets; e.g. "Status; not started yet | ongoing | completed". Selection of AM should support single choice and multiple choice
Overview page to see which pages use a selected AM (using filter for each AM key)

1.2.2 Edit and Show Advanced Metadata on Wiki Page

AM are used to characterise a wiki page and show relations to other pages. Therefore AM need not only to be edited on a wiki page but also made visible on the page.

Assign page to one or more AM defined for the wiki
- Where should this take place? In a tab or in a page action?
Display assigned AM in a page block to allow embedding AM in text by using placeholders (see implementation in data collection)
- It might be necessary to make this a special page block that can only be edited with WRITE permission to prevent that users destroy placeholders by accident.

1.2.3 Display All Pages Tagged With Selected Metadata

This part has been moved to a separate feature page: Wiki Page List Page Element

A big advantage of this feature will be to give users an overview on pages that use a specific AM and to visualise the relation of all these pages. Such lists should be embedded in the page content (and not displayed on an extra screen) to allow additional information around these lists, e.g. list of all pages assigned to AM "Release 4.4" with explanations.

New page element "Advanced Metadata List" that can be embedded in a wiki page.
Definition of selection criteria in edit mode of page element (defining all conditions that has to be fulfilled), e.g. "Release: 4.4" and "Status: not started yet".
Listed pages are linked
Option to show additional information like "Last Change" and "Last Changed by"
Option to define sorting criteria for the presentation of list items, e.g. "Title: ascending"
Stylesheet support for list block and list items

It might be a big advantage to re-use such AM lists even outside a wiki, e.g. in an overview on the upper container page (category page, course page...). In this case it is necessary to select the wiki where the AM come from.

2 Status

Scheduled for: Release 5.0
Funding: Funded by ILIAS-Verein
Maintainer: Alex Killing
Implementation of the feature is done by Alexander Killing and Jörg Lützenkirchen, Leifos
Contract settled: Yes
Tested by / status: Matthias Kunkel, testing completed

3 Additional Information

Contact the following persons if you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding:

Information about concept: Matthias Kunkel
Information about funding: Matthias Kunkel
Information about implementation: (name, e-mail)

4 Discussion

JF Jan 6 2014: We support the general idea. Matthias will update the description of this feature page and add the latest discussion. In general the feature should be as similar to the feature of glossary terms. The AM sets are still defined in the administration, but can be activated in the wiki. The AM attributes for a wiki page should be displayed in a separate side block on the right. We schedule this general support for 4.5.

The "page lists" page component feature will be moved to a separate feature wiki page.

Matthias Kunkel, Aug 22, 2014: What should be improved for 4.5:

Support of Multiple Choice (Example Feature Wiki: I cannot assign more than one contributor for one feature)
The text styles in the sidebox needs to be changed:
- The value in the key-value-pair is more important than the key. I suggest to use strong for the value and not for the key. Example:
  - Component: Blog
  - and not: Component: Blog
- In addition a ":" could be added after the key to make the relation clearer.

Features for a future extension of the current implementation (4.5) could be:

Administration: Copy one field to re-use the already entered values for another field.

Matthias Kunkel, 05 Dec 2014: Some suggestions to improve this feature for 5.0 (some of them already mentioned above):

The presentation of metadata on the right side of a wiki page (see screnshot below) could easily be improved by a simple layout change:
- At the time being, the key (=field name) has font-weight:bold while the more important value (=chosen value or input) has font-weight:normal. If we consider that important information is highlighted, the value has to be bold and the key normal! This is not a list with headlines and content but a vertical key-value-list!
The current implementation does not allow to assign several values to one key. This is a heavy restriction for using this feature. Supporting multiple selection of values would solve this problem easily.
Not every page in a wiki is a page for publishing content. Some could be overview pages, especially when using this feature together with the Wiki Page List Page Element. On such pages it doesn't make sense to assign metadata to the page content. It would be great if these blocks could be hidden manually on such selected pages ("Hide block" as part of the block dropdown and "Show {name of metadata set}" in the dropdown "Aktionen zur Seite" - a bit similar to the feature on the PD Overview).
We need to streamline the naming of the metadata feature in some way. In Administration we say "Erweiterte Metadaten" and on the wiki settings screen these are "Zusätzliche Eigenschaften von Wikiseiten". I suggest to use "Metadaten" as this term is more open than "Eigenschaften".

JF 8 Dec 2014:

For the key/values in the side block we try a italic/normal combination.
Muli-value fields would be a feature request. However as a workaround writing multiple values in text area fields and enabling a "contains" filter in the page elements could be possible. Jörg will check this.
It should be possible to hide the block (in the presentation mode) - per drop down in the block.
We need a broader discussion about the naming, since glossaries/courses avoid the "metadata" term, too (since it is quite abstract).

5 Implementation

JL 25 Jun 2014: This feature has been implemented as side block. For each wiki the active advanced metadata records can be configured.

Former Screenshots

Matthias Kunkel, December 11, 2014 (on behalf of Jörg Lützenkirchen): Above mentioned changes by Jour Fixe have been implemented by JL. Even assigning several values to one key is now possible - thanks to Jörg! Only the naming is still open.