[opensuse-wiki] Namespaces for the wiki.o.o
Hi, sorry for creating another thread on this topic, but I think this is something that we should finally solve, so creating a new thread seemed the best option to me. To me it seems there is a lot of confusion about the purpose of namespaces, so let me first try to shine a little light on this (please read!): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Purpose of namespaces: --------------------- Namespaces allow to _separate_ between content for the _editing community_ (like howtos on writing articles, guidelines, etc) and _readers_ "Namespaces allow, among other things, a separation of content from policy and discussion. They encourage separation of the pages of a wiki into a core set intended for public viewing, and private information intended for the editing community." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace] How are pages outside the main namespace handled? ---------------------------------------------------- Basically pages not from the main namespace are handled just as any other page, the only difference that is visible firsthand is the name prefix <NAMESPACE>:<PAGE TITLE>. However, there are two other main differences: * a regular search will _not_ find any pages outside of the main namespace, because the default search is limited to the main namespace * Special:AllPages by default only displays pages from the main namespace. You can select other namespaces to display, but only one at a time. Displaying pages from all namespaces is not possible Which namespaces exist by default? ---------------------------------- see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace#List_of_namespaces IMPORTANT NOTE: Because MediaWiki relies on the presence of system namespaces (the ones listed above) throughout the code, these cannot be deleted. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Namespace_manager#Deleting_namespace... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now my 2 cents: * Having read the above, it IMHO should be clear that it does not make sense, to divide the content into different namespaces such as developer, news, etc. Nor does it make sense to use the existing SDB namespace in teh future. * Since the default namespaces cannot be deleted we should utilize them before introducing new namespaces - e.g. "Help" for editing instructions, describing extensions, or openSUSE (aka Meta) for guidelines, etc. * We do not want people searching for an article to be pointed to a portal page rather than to the article itself. Therefore I would suggest to put them into a to be created namespace Portal * Apart from "Portal" I would not add any other namespaces, but rather delete the custom ones we now have /howtos, faqs, SDB, SDB talk -- Regards Frank Frank Sundermeyer, Technical Writer, Documentation SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org
Frank, regarding Namespaces I have a single desire: All "distro documentation" needs to be in one namespace to be able to utilize our QA approach with FlaggedRevs and the wiki forum. Nothing else besides "distro documentation" (i.e. those articles/tutorials interesting from an end-user perspective) should end up in the same Namespace, e.g. the Weekly News/SDB and so on and so forth. Let me explain: FlaggedRevs outputs RSS for RecentChanges of a certain namespace and this RSS feed will be utilized by "forumsadmin" RSS auto-posting bot to create corresponding reviewing threads at forums.o.o. That said, either we find a way to restrict the RSS to "distro documentation" other than with Namespaces OR we need to make sure that "distro documentation" is in a seperate namespace (=main). If we neglect this, the whole QA concept isn't achievable and this certainly isn't desirable. I mean no threads should be created for editions of the OWN, neither for team pages, guidelines, SDB and alike information in the wiki. Only end-user interesting "distro documentation" is to be considered here and if I got Rajko right this is just achievable with Namespace separation. Best, R 2009/12/23 Frank Sundermeyer <fs@suse.de>:
Hi,
sorry for creating another thread on this topic, but I think this is something that we should finally solve, so creating a new thread seemed the best option to me.
To me it seems there is a lot of confusion about the purpose of namespaces, so let me first try to shine a little light on this (please read!):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Purpose of namespaces: ---------------------
Namespaces allow to _separate_ between content for the _editing community_ (like howtos on writing articles, guidelines, etc) and _readers_
"Namespaces allow, among other things, a separation of content from policy and discussion. They encourage separation of the pages of a wiki into a core set intended for public viewing, and private information intended for the editing community." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace]
How are pages outside the main namespace handled? ----------------------------------------------------
Basically pages not from the main namespace are handled just as any other page, the only difference that is visible firsthand is the name prefix <NAMESPACE>:<PAGE TITLE>.
However, there are two other main differences: * a regular search will _not_ find any pages outside of the main namespace, because the default search is limited to the main namespace * Special:AllPages by default only displays pages from the main namespace. You can select other namespaces to display, but only one at a time. Displaying pages from all namespaces is not possible
Which namespaces exist by default? ---------------------------------- see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace#List_of_namespaces
IMPORTANT NOTE: Because MediaWiki relies on the presence of system namespaces (the ones listed above) throughout the code, these cannot be deleted. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Namespace_manager#Deleting_namespace...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now my 2 cents:
* Having read the above, it IMHO should be clear that it does not make sense, to divide the content into different namespaces such as developer, news, etc. Nor does it make sense to use the existing SDB namespace in teh future.
* Since the default namespaces cannot be deleted we should utilize them before introducing new namespaces - e.g. "Help" for editing instructions, describing extensions, or openSUSE (aka Meta) for guidelines, etc.
* We do not want people searching for an article to be pointed to a portal page rather than to the article itself. Therefore I would suggest to put them into a to be created namespace Portal
* Apart from "Portal" I would not add any other namespaces, but rather delete the custom ones we now have /howtos, faqs, SDB, SDB talk
-- Regards Frank
Frank Sundermeyer, Technical Writer, Documentation SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org
-- Rupert Horstkötter, open-slx gmbh openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Community Assistant http://en.opensuse.org/User:Rhorstkoetter Email: rhorstkoetter@opensuse.org Jabber: ruperthorstkoetter@googlemail.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org
Hello, Am Mittwoch, 23. Dezember 2009 schrieb Frank Sundermeyer:
Purpose of namespaces: ---------------------
Namespaces allow to _separate_ between content for the _editing community_ (like howtos on writing articles, guidelines, etc) and _readers_
For openSUSE, one could also say: "... to separate between content for 'normal' users and developers". The docs on mediawiki.org base on the assumption that all "real content" lives at one level ("could be interesting for everybody" - that's valid for any wikipedia article) and has the same audience, aka "readers". OTOH, the openSUSE wiki has content on multiple levels: - documentation for "normal" users - information for development, packaging etc - project-related information (teams, meetings etc.) - ... While it might sometimes be hard to draw a line between development and project related content, it is quite easy to separate the "normal user" documentation. BTW: Wikipedia has lots of "sister projects" (wikiquote, wikispecies, wikisource, wiktionary etc.) Basically they could also handle them as namespaces - that would be somehow comparable to the content of the openSUSE wiki ;-)
How are pages outside the main namespace handled? ----------------------------------------------------
However, there are two other main differences: * a regular search will _not_ find any pages outside of the main namespace, because the default search is limited to the main namespace
And exactly this is why I recommend to have multiple namespaces. It is extremely important to be able to search in a specific "part" of the wiki. To give you an example: I don't consider myself as "normal" user, but I still sometimes have to search the documentation. Being able to limit my search to the main (user doc) namespace is very important then, because random matches in KDE meeting logs won't help me with my KMail configuration ;-) BTW: Don't get me wrong - I don't want to split the community into "users" and "developers". Those are just different roles, and people may switch between those roles as often as they want. And they should be able to search only pages that match their current role ;-)
Now my 2 cents:
* Having read the above, it IMHO should be clear that it does not make sense, to divide the content into different namespaces such as developer, news, etc. Nor does it make sense to use the existing SDB namespace in teh future.
Well, I could now start a section reading... Purpose of software documentation --------------------------------- Software documentation tells you ("the user") what the developers had in mind when they developed their software. Especially, it will tell you how to use the software. Be warned that the documentation is always written from the developer's point of view, which might not always match your situation. You should always read the documentation, but in some cases you should just ignore the documentation and do what you think is the best solution for your problem. ... but I will just tell you that you can't always trust the documentation to match everybody's situation perfectly ;-) *SCNR*
* Since the default namespaces cannot be deleted we should utilize them before introducing new namespaces - e.g. "Help" for editing instructions, describing extensions, or openSUSE (aka Meta) for guidelines, etc.
ACK, good idea.
* We do not want people searching for an article to be pointed to a portal page rather than to the article itself. Therefore I would suggest to put them into a to be created namespace Portal
ACK
* Apart from "Portal" I would not add any other namespaces, but rather delete the custom ones we now have /howtos, faqs, SDB, SDB talk
NACK, see above and the namespaces proposed by Henne and Rajko (in the "Final preparations" thread and also some weeks ago). Regards, Christian Boltz -- Nur beim Account meines Hundes (der ist mein Test-User) sind alle Desktop-Icons weg [...] Aber der geht eh nicht so oft an den Rechner. [Bernd Kloss in suse-linux] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 23 December 2009 06:03:38 Frank Sundermeyer wrote: ...
However, there are two other main differences: * a regular search will _not_ find any pages outside of the main namespace, because the default search is limited to the main namespace * Special:AllPages by default only displays pages from the main namespace. You can select other namespaces to display, but only one at a time. Displaying pages from all namespaces is not possible
* Extensions can be enabled per name space. I'm not sure that all extensions allow this, but few that were tested here can be enabled per namespace. The consequence is that we can use only those that make sense in particular activity. ...
* Having read the above, it IMHO should be clear that it does not make sense, to divide the content into different namespaces such as developer, news, etc. Nor does it make sense to use the existing SDB namespace in teh future.
Dividing to namespaces should be function of particular activity needs for: * separation from default search that should serve wiki visitors * need to limit search only to subdomain of openSUSE information space * functionality provided by extensions and native MediaWiki tools When I'm done with transition table I'll be back to the list of activities. I have some items, but no defined properties, so I can't propose any separation that is based on more then a feeling.
* Since the default namespaces cannot be deleted we should utilize them before introducing new namespaces - e.g. "Help" for editing instructions, describing extensions, or openSUSE (aka Meta) for guidelines, etc.
+1
* We do not want people searching for an article to be pointed to a portal page rather than to the article itself. Therefore I would suggest to put them into a to be created namespace Portal
+1
* Apart from "Portal" I would not add any other namespaces, but rather delete the custom ones we now have /howtos, faqs, SDB, SDB talk
+1 How many to add depends on what functionality we want to achieve. For some activities we can be better off with completely separate server, like long time announced babel.opensuse.org for collection of translations. -- Regards Rajko, openSUSE Wiki Team: http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team People of openSUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/People_of_openSUSE/About -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org
participants (4)
-
Christian Boltz -
Frank Sundermeyer -
Rajko M. -
Rupert Horstkötter