We should decide how to handle subpages ie. those like: HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
For little benefit of automatic back links (sometimes called bread crumbs) page title look like URL path which is not good layout. When someone moves page those back links mix with redirect back links making line that should help browsing, actually confusing. To see what I mean try this link:
http://en.opensuse.org/HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
Page was moved to make HOWTO naming consistent, and now user has 2 links to follow.
I propose to use subpages to one level depth as additional explanation to the main article, that user has to read and then go back to the main topic, and only in such cases where additional explanation is specific to main article. If it is about how to switch to root, that is used all over the wiki, so very much not specific it has to go to separate page.
What do you think?
Rajko M. wrote:
I propose to use subpages to one level depth as additional explanation to the main article
yes, or only if a page is too long and needs to be separated (that is the sub page must be unusable without the main page)
jdd
On Friday 27 June 2008 07:45:38 am jdd wrote:
Rajko M. wrote:
I propose to use subpages to one level depth as additional explanation to the main article
yes, or only if a page is too long and needs to be separated (that is the sub page must be unusable without the main page)
We think the same. Example for what you said is Communicate page and that is what I find useful, but going more than that makes ugly looking titles.
BTW, I have no intention to move all pages that are already created. This is proposal how to go from now on, and if enough wiki editors agree, it will go in openSUSE wiki guidelines, so that article writers don't complain when wiki maintenance editors move article.
So a bit more detailed: * explanation to article that is not necessary to read for most of readers * procedure that will only clutter article: ** current version procedure in article, but for older versions subpages ** in gnome do this, in kde this; a bit of duplication, but without if-then in main body of article, which is confusing (hard to read) for non programmers * index page with listed topics and topic indexes (see Portal)
Did I forget something?
On Friday 27 June 2008 07:15:49 am Rajko M. wrote:
We should decide how to handle subpages ie. those like: HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
For little benefit of automatic back links (sometimes called bread crumbs) page title look like URL path which is not good layout. When someone moves page those back links mix with redirect back links making line that should help browsing, actually confusing. To see what I mean try this link:
http://en.opensuse.org/HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
Page was moved to make HOWTO naming consistent, and now user has 2 links to follow.
I propose to use subpages to one level depth as additional explanation to the main article, that user has to read and then go back to the main topic, and only in such cases where additional explanation is specific to main article. If it is about how to switch to root, that is used all over the wiki, so very much not specific it has to go to separate page.
Today I was looking at http://en.opensuse.org/Category:GNOME and discovered one more case where using subpages makes more trouble than benefit.
All GNOME related pages are listed under letter G . I took that as an example. All efforts of GNOME team to make pages easy accessible led to result that is not better than already present in All Pages: http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=GNOME&...
The same is valid for any other example of subpages overuse.
The problem is that there is more groups of articles that made internal wiki categories pointless to use: YaST, Build Service, KDE etc. The KDE is special case, as Las2kn0 tried to clean that up and assign more helpful categories. We don't have many tools to index and present for browsing openSUSE wiki content. Disabling them for large groups of articles is probably not the way we want to go.
Compare that with http://en.opensuse.org/Category:HOWTOs When creating HOWTOs index, pflodo asked to put word HOWTO at the end of the article title. Now articles are listed by letter, not all under H.
I would like to hear proposals how to solve this, for both present problems and future.
Rajko M. a écrit :
The problem is that there is more groups of articles that made internal wiki categories pointless to use: YaST, Build Service, KDE etc.
If we choose to use categories, it should be made obvious than title *must not* include the category name on the beginning. Eventually, set in at the end in parenthesis (gnome), or in the abstract (first paragraph without title, before the table of content)
jdd
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On Saturday 28 June 2008 12:52:36 pm jdd wrote:
Rajko M. a écrit :
The problem is that there is more groups of articles that made internal wiki categories pointless to use: YaST, Build Service, KDE etc.
If we choose to use categories, it should be made obvious than title *must not* include the category name on the beginning. Eventually, set in at the end in parenthesis (gnome), or in the abstract (first paragraph without title, before the table of content)
jdd
Daniel.
problem is excessive use of subpages, and it comes up only in categories that contain mostly or even exclusively subpages of main article like YaST, Build Service, GNOME. KDE is accidentally not problem as Josh moved pages in different categories, but even there all different articles about KDE sit on one pile under letter K.
The same happens when you look in Portal/All.
Subpages are not the way to create groups of articles.
Well, it seems to be a time to write instructions how to write titles. I'll look at wikipedia, how they handle this.
Rajko M. a écrit :
Subpages are not the way to create groups of articles.
yes, but this is a different problem
Well, it seems to be a time to write instructions how to write titles. I'll look at wikipedia, how they handle this.
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On Sat, 2008-06-28 at 12:38 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:
On Friday 27 June 2008 07:15:49 am Rajko M. wrote:
We should decide how to handle subpages ie. those like: HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
For little benefit of automatic back links (sometimes called bread crumbs) page title look like URL path which is not good layout. When someone moves page those back links mix with redirect back links making line that should help browsing, actually confusing. To see what I mean try this link:
http://en.opensuse.org/HowTos/GNOME/ExtendingNautilus
Page was moved to make HOWTO naming consistent, and now user has 2 links to follow.
I propose to use subpages to one level depth as additional explanation to the main article, that user has to read and then go back to the main topic, and only in such cases where additional explanation is specific to main article. If it is about how to switch to root, that is used all over the wiki, so very much not specific it has to go to separate page.
Today I was looking at http://en.opensuse.org/Category:GNOME and discovered one more case where using subpages makes more trouble than benefit.
All GNOME related pages are listed under letter G . I took that as an example. All efforts of GNOME team to make pages easy accessible led to result that is not better than already present in All Pages: http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=GNOME&...
The same is valid for any other example of subpages overuse.
The problem is that there is more groups of articles that made internal wiki categories pointless to use: YaST, Build Service, KDE etc. The KDE is special case, as Las2kn0 tried to clean that up and assign more helpful categories. We don't have many tools to index and present for browsing openSUSE wiki content. Disabling them for large groups of articles is probably not the way we want to go.
Compare that with http://en.opensuse.org/Category:HOWTOs When creating HOWTOs index, pflodo asked to put word HOWTO at the end of the article title. Now articles are listed by letter, not all under H.
I would like to hear proposals how to solve this, for both present problems and future.
I am the person that made the effort to clean up our GNOME pages in recent weeks. In fact, we plan to have a "Wiki Day" soon to better structure our GNOME pages soon. However, I am willing to put that off until we get better guidance from you on how to properly organize and make pages easier to find for our readers.
As I raised in a previous thread several weeks ago, a number of pages fell through the cracks because they did not have the GNOME category tag attached to it. We had to ask around our team and HOPE that someone remembered a page (and its URL) that they may have written way back when. Through searches, we were able to recover 12 additional pages beyond the pages we currently have listed when you select the GNOME category. We're left wondering whether there are still more pages out there that no one remembers.
The problem with it is we have to remember to add the GNOME category to a page. It would be nice if somehow, we could see every page under http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/, as we're sure there's some useful information that might have slipped through the cracks. It also helps us to determine what information is no longer relevant and can be removed from the system.
Regarding the other issue brought up about links to HowTo pages, when I created the /Accessibility/ page and the /GNOME/HowTos/, I, as well as consultation with others, decided it would be most prudent to have all howtos listed under /HowTos/ and then link to them in /GNOME/HowTos/ as well as /Accessibility/. In this way, we don't have groups of HowTos stashed all over the place, but rather one single place that hosts all HowTos.
The reason behind that was to ensure that if a reader decides to go to /Whatever/Howtos or to /Howtos/ directly, they will always find relevant howtos, rather than hunting all over. "Do I find my Howto here or there?"
We have a keen interest in furthering the number of GNOME howtos in the near future and as a team we are actively taking approaches to make this happen in a more timely manner. I am also keen to do the same with /Accessibility/ because presently there is no clear line of sight to a11y information when a user visits o.o.
In all honesty, and I hear the same from many others, I have found the wiki to be rather unnavigable and difficult to find information. Search is only effective when you know what you want to search for. But searching and browsing are two very different things. I only know about pages I go to now because of word of mouth on the IRC channels and then bookmark them for future reference. A well organized site shouldn't require its readers to bookmark every single useful page. Bookmarking at the homepage should be sufficient.
I just now discovered the "Team" link on the homepage. But seriously, if a user wants to learn more about GNOME or KDE in openSUSE, why would they think to click on "Team"? I don't think users in general associate components of their operating system with teams.
Bryen
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On Saturday 28 June 2008 01:03:31 pm Bryen wrote:
On Sat, 2008-06-28 at 12:38 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:
...
I would like to hear proposals how to solve this, for both present problems and future.
I am the person that made the effort to clean up our GNOME pages in recent weeks.
Thank you.
In fact, we plan to have a "Wiki Day" soon to better structure our GNOME pages soon. However, I am willing to put that off until we get better guidance from you on how to properly organize and make pages easier to find for our readers.
I'm looking for a solution :-)
The one with subpages is obviously not good. In another thread "GNOME and KDE should have their name spaces" is proposed to have name space for large groups of articles, though more than GNOME:<article title> Mediawiki software doesn't allow, so it will solve one level of subpages, but resolve need for general GNOME (KDE, YaST, Build Service, etc) category.
...
It would be nice if somehow, we could see every page under http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/, as we're sure there's some useful information that might have slipped through the cracks. It also helps us to determine what information is no longer relevant and can be removed from the system.
http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=GNOME&... This will list all pages starting with GNOME, but it will continue listing with other pages where title starts with G, H, I and so on until there is place on the page.
... it would be most prudent to have all howtos listed under /HowTos/ and then link to them in /GNOME/HowTos/ as well as /Accessibility/. In this way, we don't have groups of HowTos stashed all over the place, but rather one single place that hosts all HowTos.
The main page for "How to" articles is HOWTOs. That is what you will get with search for any of "howto, howTo, howtos, howTos". Due to automatic capitalization of first letter of the title there is no difference between howto and Howto and since openSUSE search box (function) is no more case sensitive then howTo and howto will give the same result.
Wikipedia way to make sure that search word that is: - singular or plural; howto or howtos - different spelling; missing example - different capitalization; Howto or HowTo (not needed anymore) will always lead to the main article, in this case HOWTOs is to use redirects [1]. The redirect howTo is artifact from time when search was the same as the Wikipedia's ie. case sensitive except for the first letter.
The reason behind that was to ensure that if a reader decides to go to /Whatever/Howtos or to /Howtos/ directly, they will always find relevant howtos, rather than hunting all over. "Do I find my Howto here or there?"
The page http://en.opensuse.org/HOWTOs is central place. We can introduce another listings sorted by topic. In the main HOWTOs page list few most asked articles and the rest link using 'more ...' as a visible name for the link.
...
In all honesty, and I hear the same from many others, I have found the wiki to be rather unnavigable and difficult to find information.
Nothing new. See thread: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki/2008-06/msg00001.html It evolved fast in direction where everything was topic, except the ways to improve wiki, but you can find links that are given as sample of simplicity. I can't see them all that rosie. Everyone has problems, including Ubuntu.
Search is only effective when you know what you want to search for. But searching and browsing are two very different things. I only know about pages I go to now because of word of mouth on the IRC channels and then bookmark them for future reference. A well organized site shouldn't require its readers to bookmark every single useful page. Bookmarking at the homepage should be sufficient.
I just now discovered the "Team" link on the homepage. But seriously, if a user wants to learn more about GNOME or KDE in openSUSE, why would they think to click on "Team"? I don't think users in general associate components of their operating system with teams.
The front page is the source of problems and it needs another facelift to sort out the content. Most of the page is OK, but some stuff is missing.
Comment on Support link (FMonkey) that leads to http://en.opensuse.org/Communicate is valid point. Support should be the page that lists all support options. That includes online documentation indexes with links to articles sorted in few different ways (by software group, software component, version, hardware group, hardware component, manufacturer, etc) and communication channels which is present.
This way user would not need to look in Teams to find GNOME, KDE, YaST and other related documentation.
I'll pick up comments on different places and start new thread.
[1] Redirect is page that has only one line, for instance: #redirect [[HOWTOs]] the string must start at the begin of the line, and there is no space between # and word 'redirect'.
-
Bryen -
jdd -
Rajko M.