FamilySearch Wiki:The Un-Portal Page: Difference between revisions

In 2008, wiki users adopted the use of portals for certain types of pages, especially pages about places. Portals display content in boxes; the content of each box actually resides in another page. We learned later that portals caused problems because 1) they confused editors who didn't understand the content resided outside the portal page, and 2) FCKeditor, our editing software, clashed with portals, making it necessary to disable the use of FCKeditor on any portal page system-wide. This meant that in order to edit portals, people had to edit in raw wikitext. Since many users don't like to edit in wikitext, this effectively limited the number of users who would be willing to edit the portals. Generally wiki communities opt to do what they can to encourage editors rather than discouraging them, so this felt like a problem.  

Wiki contributors had many conversations in Community Meetings, by e-mail, and over the phone about finding an alternative to portals. David Crowther gave us one: he laid out the content we wanted by using columns rather than portal frameworks. After many delays in reaching a consensus, users attending the 22 September 2009 Community Meeting voted unanimously to allow [[User:Eduardo H Seoane|Eduardo Seoane]] to convert all the wiki's portals to column-layout pages, or Unportals. (To hear the discussion and the vote, see the meeting [http://ldschurch1.na5.acrobat.com/p96508612/ recording].)