Contents

This page aims to clarify how to use this wiki. It contains

Structure of the wiki

Units

The wiki describes several distinct units in the organization of standards in The Netherlands. Namely,

• Standards
• Application profiles
• Working groups
• Decisions

The standards are usually international agreements. The pages concerning the standards provide a short description of the standard and a URL to the standards own page. These pages will also provide a link to the application profile describing the standard's use.

The core unit of the wiki are the application profiles, which describe how a standard is used in The Netherlands within the appropiate context. Each application profile describes a solution to a specific problem. When looking up such an application profile, two levels of detail are present; Overview, which describes what the problem is and how this is solved, basically to give an idea of the application profile, and Expert, which gives technical details about the application profile and how it works. In each an abstract is present that describes in short what the application profile is about. In essence, the Expert detail level is the official application profile, Overview is a description of this. The wiki pages of the application profile all have the status Draft. For the official agreed upon version, see the PDF file.

The pages concerning the working groups describe the working groups that are responsible for maintaining the application profiles. In these pages a description is given of what problem the specific working group tries to solve and what their scope and role is. With these pages, one can also find out who works on specific application profiles and how to contact them.

The last unit are the decisions, which describe the decisions made by working groups and the WISH in the last years concerning the use of standards.

Structure

The application profiles are structured in several ways. First, an alphabetical list of all the application profiles is present on [Application profiles]. On the [Categories] page, all the application profiles are categorized according to their topic.

Who can use the wiki

There are 5 roles associated with this wiki with different possibilities of interaction with the content;

• Visitor
• Moderator
• Working group
• Authority group
• Administrator

The visitor is the default role for anyone visiting the wiki. The visitor can review the content on the website and can place comments with questions or proposals.

The moderator is a person assigned to be responsible for specific application profile pages. Thus, the role of moderator is relevant to specific pages of application profiles (not the entire wiki). The moderator responds to the comments from the visitors, makes the appropriate changes to the application profile pages and communicates this with the responsible authorities. The moderator may propose changes to the working group, they have the status of proposal.

The working group is a group responsible for maintaining the application profiles. They are responsible for the application profiles in the context of its use within the Netherlands. For most application profiles, a working group is created for its maintenance, see the page working groups They communicate their decisions with the moderator (see workflow below), these decisions serve as advices for the authority group. The working group thus doesn't edit the pages, but communicates that to the moderator.

The authority group is the group with the authority to make decisions about the application profiles within the Netherlands. They decide whether to follow the advices of the working group or not. The decision of this authority group is incorporated into the application profile, which has the status of standard within the Netherlands. The authority group thus doesn't edit the pages, but communicaties that to the moderator.

Last, there is the administrator of the wiki. ?SURFfoundation hosts the wiki and maintains it technically. The administrator keeps the wiki clean from spammers and helps with technical problems. The administrator is not responsible for the subject-matter of the wiki, but maintains whether the pages are created according to the guidelines, so that the wiki remains clean and clear. For more info see the ?Wiki working group page.

How to use the wiki

Besides reading the wiki and learning about the topics one is interested in, the main advantage a wiki has is the functionality of collaboration. The collaboration this wiki provides is described in three actions:

• Commenting
• Editing
• Exporting to PDF

Commenting

Each page features the possibility to post comments. Especially in the case of the application profiles it might be of interest to ask questions or propose changes to the application profile. There are two distincts ways of placing comments.

When placing comments in the comment section, everyone is allowed to post comments, these comments may then be replied to be the moderator assigned to the specific application profile. The comments are placed at the bottom of the page.

When placing comments inline in the document, only those who are allowed to edit the concerning page can place such comments. This can be especially useful when discussing on-line as a working group, in the situation of developing a new application profile. Once the discussion is finished and the application profile is agreed upon, the moderator should remove the comments. For such comments, use the following guidelines, in which we follow guidelines from the ?Confluence notation guide:

First and foremost, for means of keeping communication followable and transparent, close every comment with --name author, date so that everyone knows who made the comment and when.

• In the case of a general informative comment (not for discussion), use the {info} tags. In the case of a general informative comment, the --author, date rule may not always be necessary, specifically when the comment isn't part of a discussion but part of the application profile.

{info} A general informative comment - Author, date {info} leads to:

• In the case of a warning when something is wrong or has high priority, use the {warning} tags.

{warning} A warning about something wrong or with high priority -- Author, date {warning} leads to:

• In the case of general comments for means of discussion, use the {note} tags.

{note} A comment for means of discussion -- Author, date {note} leads to:

Editing

The application profiles may need changes, the moderator can make changes to the page. There are two stages of changing a profile: when editing a profile, one should annotate these changes to identify their proper status. When a change of an application profile is proposed by a moderator, this moderator should add the {proposal} tags around this change. When this proposal is agreed upon by the relevant working group, the status should be updated to advice and the tags should be {advice}. This results in the following identifications of status:

{proposal} {proposal}

{advice} {advice}

Only the moderator is allowed to make these changes.

Exporting to PDF

The advice from a working group is then discussed in the WISH, which decides whether the change should be made officially part of the application profile. When this is the case the annotations may be removed and an export is made of the wikipage to PDF. The PDF file is then uploaded and becomes the latest official agreed upon version. The changes are described in the Document history on the wikipage.

Workflow

The above results in the following workflow on maintenance of the application profile pages:

The workflow for how an application profile is instantiated can be found on Application Profiles workflow