Rajko (rmatov101@charter.net) wrote:

Hi Adam,

On Mon, 9 Sep 2013 16:59:42 +0100 Adam Spiers wrote:

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And what is the roadmap for completely shutting down the old wiki?

There are no plans to shut it off.

Among reasons that you mentioned, like articles that are not transferred, but still have value, there are article histories documenting contributions which we have to honor.

But surely the remaining articles *need* to be in the new wiki, so that they can be maintained properly? And article history can be preserved during a transfer? I thought that was the point of Special:Import/Export? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org

Rajko (rmatov101@charter.net) wrote:

On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:11:43 +0100 Adam Spiers wrote:

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But surely the remaining articles *need* to be in the new wiki, so that they can be maintained properly?

Right, but we miss since ever maintainers, that will go and fix problems. Currently it is C. Boltz for technical issues, and me for all other stuff. Both not available that much. There are also guys that translate wiki to other languages and fix problems on the go.

I try to fix things when I spot them. But in this case I was not able to, because the process was not at all obvious.

You stumbled on one that was forgotten in a rush to transfer as many as possible before release. Later we didn't do that much to check what is left in the old wiki. (See above for manpower :-)

Sure, I totally understand and sympathize. And to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with a phased migration, even if that migration takes a long time. But I think it *would* be wrong if the migration never completes and we have two wikis forever (except maybe for the possible reasons below).

There could be some other, but old wiki is not small and it will take time to go trough and find what is not transferred, find someone that understands topic to make estimate what to do, and finally transfer. Not impossible, but a lot of work for available man-hours.

Well, this makes it even more important to ensure that it is easy for wiki newbies like me to help out, doesn't it? That's why I suggested that you add that header to all pages on the old wiki. That should be really easy to do, and instantly alerts people to the difference between the old and new wikis, and encourages them to help with the migration.

I can try to check articles, but I'm not good at making things simple and usable, at least not in a short time. (That was main reason we had transition the way we had. I was always late with proposals, or they were too complicated.)

I think it's wrong to expect you or a small group of people to do all the hard work. Divide and conquer is a better approach. That's the whole idea behind wikis in the first place, after all. Otherwise it would be called an encyclopedia, not a wiki ;-)

I have not much time recently, but I'll think about review of old wiki and how to do it.

Please, just add that header. It's all you need ;-)

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And article history can be preserved during a transfer? I thought that was the point of Special:Import/Export?

It is.

Problem was with some pages that have huge history that created problem during the transfer. I guess it was problem with available memory on the server. I can't recollect exact error, but while it was solvable configuration issue, it would take time to get someone at Novell to do that. So we resorted to copy and paste method.

It is much later that we got Matthew as server admin that was, and still is very responsive, although he is on a different job now.

Combine that with all other problems we had during transition, like time pressure, relatively complicated, not completely thought through and consequently not well documented transfer procedure (as you noticed), and we are good that new wiki came out pretty usable in its initial release.

I see. At this point, I think it's not a disaster to lose the history of pages which were still not transferred several years after the main migration. But if people are worried about losing the history, it's OK to keep the old wiki running just to provide access to the history - but *ONLY* if every page has that header!! It needs to: - warn that the user is looking at out of date content - suggest where the replacement page might be by providing links to * the page with the same name on the new wiki * the search page on the new wiki - explain how to transfer it, if the above search for it shows that it was never transferred. Please help us to help you! Thanks a lot for listening :) Adam -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org

Rajko (rmatov101@charter.net) wrote:

On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 10:46:59 +0100 Adam Spiers wrote:

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OK to keep the old wiki running just to provide access to the history - but *ONLY* if every page has that header!! It needs to:

- warn that the user is looking at out of date content - suggest where the replacement page might be by providing links to * the page with the same name on the new wiki * the search page on the new wiki - explain how to transfer it, if the above search for it shows that it was never transferred.

Please help us to help you!

Thanks a lot for listening :)

OK, but there is a small problem, I can't log in :)

Why not? And if not, presumably you are unable to edit or review pages etc., so you have a much bigger problem. It's just your Novell Login account, so if you forgot the password you can reset it here: https://secure-www.novell.com/selfreg/jsp/forgotAll.jsp?ref=h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org

Rajko (rmatov101@charter.net) wrote:

On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:05:45 +0100 Adam Spiers wrote:

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Why not? And if not, presumably you are unable to edit or review pages etc., so you have a much bigger problem.

Problem solved. (Check another email :)

Great, thanks!

Btw, opensuse-wiki is depreciated, we use opensuse-web@opensuse.org for all web related communication.

Hmm. How do you expect people to know that? I've been subscribed to opensuse-wiki for quite a long time already, and this is the first time I heard that :-/ I'm getting dèja vu ... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org