Early in the life of the CUNY Academic Commons, an important space for collaborative writing and for the sharing of open content was our Wiki – powered by MediaWiki . In recent years, users have preferred newer areas of the Commons – Sites, Group Docs, Social Paper – for this kind of functionality. As a result, we have decided to remove our standalone Wiki and replace the tab with one of our newer features: Events.

Why take away the Wiki?

The Commons Team initially intended for the Wiki be an open and flexible space for members to share their work. But members have sometimes found MediaWiki’s interface and functionality difficult to use, especially when compared with our BuddyPress-powered social features. While the Commons Development Team has focused its energies on the building of new features for WordPress and BuddyPress, the Wiki has not responded to the needs of the community the same way. As different areas of the Commons evolved and new tools for the Commons have been created, members began to prefer to work with these other tools. The decline in the Wiki was apparent in our site-wide metrics and informed our decision to sunset this feature.

Wiki content is still available

All pages of the Wiki have been transferred from the existing MediaWiki site (https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/) to a WordPress site (https://wiki.commons.gc.cuny.edu). Any links to existing Wiki content have been automatically redirected to the new site, so existing links to Wiki pages will continue to function. We have removed the Wiki from the Commons navigation menus, but it continues to be accessible directly via https://wiki.commons.gc.cuny.edu, or by browsing via the Sites directory.

Migrated Wiki content is generally meant to be read-only. If you’d like to edit or remove any migrated content that you are the author of, contact the Commons team using the Help link at the top-right of any Commons page, and we can grant edit access. We’ll be maintaining indefinite backups of legacy wiki content. If you notice that any content was incompletely or improperly migrated, please let us know.

We’re focused on making the Commons the kind of collaborative space that our members want and need. If you have any suggestions for new features or improvements on current features, please don’t hesitate to reach out. For a more in-depth look at previous and upcoming project releases, please consult our development roadmap.

credit: http://giphy.com/gifs/sunset-desert-d48qgWQMxWMco

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