Hello! Am Sonntag, 14. Mai 2006 15:03 schrieb Peter Flodin:
I would like to discuss this further, as I agree with your overall assesment. Even though the wiki is not yet a year old, it is easy to get boxed in with existing content and structure. Some of the existing structure is from when there were practically no articles last August.
So in your proposed approach, what do you see on the Documentation page? We also need to incorporate the SDB, as it just sits on the outside at the moment.
The problem I see is that if the current categories on the site remain, the user might have to visit several of them, if s/he wants to find something. As an example: A user comes to the wiki and wants to find something about getting his WLAN-card to work. There might be some articles in installation, since network-card-setup is part of the installation. Yet it can also be part of the category configuration, since it must be configured. Then again, it can be part of Hardware, since the HCL sometimes contains hints for certain devices and a device certainly is a piece of hardware. Last but not least, there could be a HOWTO about how to set-up a WLAN-card. So there is the start-page, searching for help and support, guessing that documentation means help and support, click, first category, back, second, back... If there was a category "Devices and Drivers: Setting up and configuring devices such as network-cards, printers, graphics-borad etc." on the start-page, the user would not have to search for help or "documentation". There would be a category with direct relevance to the question s/he has, which could offer everything concerning a device. In the Category "Devices and Drivers" one would have sub-categories, i.e. network-devices, graphics, printers and so on. If the user chooses network-devices, s/he gets all the info needed, i.e. installing, settings-up, configuring, HOWTOs, troubleshooting and the network-devices-HCL, novell-docs etc. I think we should come up with the questions users ask and see what categories offer them a direct connection to their question. Questions I thought about are: How do I set-up my printer, wlan-card, graphics-board, scanner, digicam etc.? -> Devices and Drivers How can I get help? -> Getting help, rerporting bugs. How do I install package xyz, how do I install a tar.gz, where can I find packages for xyz, how do I update KDE? -> Installation and Software-Package-Management How do I create a letter, a spreadsheet, which software can I use to organise my finances, how do I create PDFs? -> Office In windows I used to do xyz to install an app, how do I do that in Linux? -> First steps How do I set-up my email-app, which apps are available, how do I set-up IRC, which apps are available, how do I set-up file-sharing or an ftp-server, how can I share my desktop, how do I set-up SSH? -> Local-Network and Internet How do I play mp3s, how do I watch divx or DVD, how can I encode audio/video, how do I edit my photos? -> Multimedia and Graphics. Other categories would be: Development Sys-Admin Games Desktop Environments IMHO these categories should be available with no click, i.e. on the startpage with a one-sentence-description. After clicking on a category there should be the sub-categories: Devices and Drivers: - Network-devices - Graphics-devices - Keyboard and Mouse - Printers and Scanners - Notebooks - Monitors - Soundcards As a result, the user does not have to search for a page that offers the categoris, but sees them right away when coming to opensuse.org. And only one click is needed to access the page with the sub-categories and the links to the articles. Another thing I was thinking about, what term is written on the little books that come with a MP3-player and one has a look at, if one wants to know how that thingy works, is it documentation, or something like instructions or guide? Sven