Portal:Beta testing
From PhilosophyWiki.org (public beta)
PhilosophyWiki is currently undergoing a period of limited beta testing before we launch the site for general academic use later this year. As such, certain aspects of the site may be missing or not function as expected. We would be grateful if you could make a note of anything you see that doesn't work, looks incorrect, or that you find confusing or unintuitive. You can do this either by
- adding a note to the relevant discussion page,
- adding an issue or comments to the site feedback page, or
- sending an e-mail to betatest@philosophywiki.org.
Although we are unable to respond personally to each individual query, we will endeavour to address any issues raised as soon as possible, and your feedback will go a long way towards making PhilosophyWiki a successful and valuable academic resource for future use.
Timeline (revised)
- Internal beta, September 2006
- Most of the initial development work is complete and we are now looking for people to test, use and otherwise comment on what has been done so far. These comments will be used to refine and debug the working of the site, as well as build up a repository of content for others to edit in preparation for the next phase of the release.
- Public beta, October 2007
- We intend to release the public beta version later this year, which will be more stable with various additional capabilities (LaTeX equation rendering, page status tracking) and minor enhancements to the look and feel of the site. Once we have achieved a sufficient following, and a critical mass of content pages including all the main philosophy journals and key subject areas in contemporary analytic philosophy, we will move to the final phase of releasing the site.
- Public release, December 2007 (provisional)
- After the final release, we will continue to maintain and develop the site, and start the process of seeking funding for its continued operation and enhancement. We hope to build an active community of academic and researcher users and we hope you will continue to use and contribute to the site in any way that you can, whether this be as an editor, reviewer, tester, or simply by visiting the site on a regular basis as part of ongoing research or studies. A wiki is only as good as its user community and with your help we can turn PhilosophyWiki into an internationally significant philosophy research resource.
Notes to beta testers
We welcome you to try out any area or aspect of PhilosophyWiki that you wish and give us your comments, feedback and suggestions on the relevant pages or by e-mail as described above. However, it would be particularly useful if you could help to build up the content of the site by adding pages of the following types:
- Subject areas: these help to make the site easier to navigate and may be created by going the main subject index (accessible via the link in the top-right hand corner of every page), and entering the name of the relevant topic or subject area to create. Subjects may be linked together via category links showing just how easily a wiki can grow and evolve in response to user demand.
- Journals and authors: we would like to build up our index of philosophy journals and key authors. These can again be created by going to the relevant index page, entering the name of the journal or author as it appears in the published work, and following the on-screen instructions.
- Reviews and synopses: PhilosophyWiki is primarily about providing reviews and summaries of published academic research and so we would be very happy if you can spare the time to add these to any pages that you or other users create.
- Bibliographies: a new PhilosophyWiki feature that allows reading lists and other bibliographical resources to be compiled for named Category:authors and subject areas.
Note that in all cases, the pages you add don't need to be complete, highly polished pieces of prose. Thanks to the nature of a wiki, you can submit as much or as little information as you like. This can then be later added to, amended or revised by other users. However, we do ask that all changes to credited work (particularly reviews and responses) either be added to the relevant comments page rather than the main page, or is clearly marked with your signature, which can be inserted by typing three tilde (~) characters (four if you wish include the date and time that the comment was added – there is a button for this on the PhilosophyWiki edit page just above the main text area).
Please also take a moment to familiarise yourself with the naming conventions that used throughout PhilosophyWiki. These are intended to promote consistency across the site, and to avoid unnecessary duplication of content due to minor differences in capitalisation, punctuation, and so on. (Wiki page names are case sensitive and so Bertrand Russell points to a different page than bertrand russell, although note that the first letter of the page name is always capitalised, so you don't need to worry about the position that links appear within a sentence.)
Getting started
We're currently in the process of writing comprehensive documentation on the aims and use of PhilosophyWiki. However, to get you started, here are some useful links about MediaWiki, the open source software that powers it:
Specific requests for documentation or queries may be added to the help comments page, which will help us to prioritise the material to be written, including a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) for the benefit of new and experienced users alike.
