Wiki features

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Features wanted for the Wiki in Moodle 2.0, and status of existence in existing wikis :

Wanted feature	eWiki (Moodle 1.8 etc)	NWiki and Wiki in Moodle 2.0	OUWiki	Comment
Mediawiki syntax	No	Yes	No	There should be option to use Mediawiki syntax also in forums, resources, etc. - new text format.
Ability to quickly summarize a students total overall contributions e.g. words added/words deleted/comments added	No	In development	Soon	About Nwiki grading system (by Ludo): The 1.9 version of NWiki will come ( on april 2008) with a newly designed grading system. The pages can be graded by teacher or peers, and the contributions (single edit or group of edits in the differences page) to pages can be rated positive, negative or without significant imporvement (+ - = ).. All of this information comes to a special page that sumarices the activities and grades received by the student. A requirement added to this page by MD is to "see" in this report the contributions ( diferences in pages). This page allows the teacher to grade the student and send the grade ( of the whole wiki activity ) to the gradebook.
Preserve line breaks	?	yes in HTML editor	No	Information is often pasted into a wiki, a wiki is used by younger students, or there are a quick succession of edits during class, such as creating a list, that require preserved line breaks. Using Creole Wiki Markup as the ONLY markup unfortunately destroys pasting in information and trying to find every crlf in a pasted document and replace it with a /n is beyond most users. We have to remember that wikis will often be used by those who have never used one before. NOTE by Ludo.. If you need to copy and paste maybe you need to use the HTML editor, since you can choose the markup to be used in each page of the wiki (in nwiki) this is easy to do.
Ability to add an "add to the page" box anywhere, or multiple times, in a page	no	is implemented in the discussion pages, its easy to add it to the regular pages but... what is the point?	no	The "Add to the page" box would be added using very simple markup (e.g., it is a plus sign at the beginning of a line in Swiki). The button has a small text area with it that can be typed in and, when the button is clicked, the information goes straight to that spot in a wiki. We use this for brainstorming in class with several groups so they can work in a small group but see and build a common document. Adding comments to students' pages, either by other students, or the students place the box at the top of the page and a teacher can quickly make a comment and move on. Even during meetings several of us share recording duties, and with the add to the page box, we can each be typing then submit. Properly implemented, this eliminates editing collisions in these situations. Each submit is treated as a separate page edit in the editing recored. Additional characters or markup beyond the one to insert the box would give the option of having lines between, keeping the box above the submissions (so it stays in place), or adding a time/date/user stamp in a different font to identify who added the information. NOTE by Ludo, as I said this feature is to be placed on discussion pages, just like in Mediawiki
Table of contents	no	Yes in Nwiki markup	yes	RSS is increasingly the way I like to consume and remix my information.
RSS feeds on changes to a page and changes to the Wiki	no	comming up (expected May 2008)	yes	RSS is increasingly the way I like to consume and remix my information.
Watch a Wiki page or a bunch of them somehow related	?	?	?	Watching pages by email is sometimes needed, as it is in moodle docs (mediawiki). One click watch on a wiki book ("structure") or a category of wiki pages is very very useful (like the features implemented in Tikiwiki CMS/Groupware)... NOTE .Can it be done by RSS? Why to have tho mechanisms of subscription ?
Prevent simultaneous wiki page edits (or allow synchroedit feature :-)	sort of	Yes, on 1.9 NWiki implements ection edit (in Nwiki markup) with lock at section level	?	When two people attempt to edit the same page, the second one should get a notice reporting to be aware that somebody else opened that page before for editing. And this should be an note, not a real lock. On the contrary, if Synchroediting (http://www.synchroedit.com/) was possible, it would be even better, and would prevent many students and teachers to use Google Docs to write documents collaboratively outside Moodle.
Simple access to rendering pages outside Wiki module	?	dfWiki	?	Many many time ago I have developed tool for including wiki page in any other Moodle resources. Details here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=42325 But in NWiki this became impossible because rendering page outside wiki module became very difficult! I dream that in official Moodle's wiki this will once again become possible! And promise update this tool! ;-) We hold on to that ;-)
Simple compare versions tool like media wiki on the history tab.	?	Hard to find NOTE by Ludo How would you improve that? Like mediawiki in the history page?	?	current nwiki highlight differences bit is hard to find (but very effective)

Reporting student contributions to OU wiki is one of the reports we are currently working on, I think.