Hi all, at the Founders meeting today it was requested that someone
(me) drop a note to the list about wiki pages.

Firstly: don't be afraid to edit. But when making an edit think to
yourself: a) does this make the page more useful and b) does this make
the page less readable.

External links: if you add a new link to the wiki, for example
[http://example.com/shelves Some exciting shelves], then you'll be
asked to answer a 'captcha' question which appears at the top of the
edit box after you hit 'Submit'. The questions are very easy. This is
to stop people spamming the wiki with blue pill links.

Organisation: if you add a page, ask yourself 'how are people going to
find it?'. Either find a list of similar links to add it to or, if
that fails, start a new one. If it is a page you particularly want
people to edit, drop the mailing list a note.

Content: a page needs to answer 'what is this', 'why do I care' and
'how do I find out more?'. For example, Phil and I have put up a page
on the in-progress equipment database:
http://makespace.org/wiki/index.php/Equipment_status_database (more on
this in another email).

The front page: this has got a bit cluttered with interesting links
but not much in the way of organisation. I'm starting a discussion
about a re-design
(http://makespace.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:Makespace). Please join.
Remember that typing '--~~~~' will automatically sign your comment so
we know who made it and when.

--
Dr Rich Wareham

Thanks Rich, that's really helpful :)

If you aren't sure where to start on the wiki, there's now a "currently
active" list - a curated selection of pages which are (hopefully)
interesting to jump in on.

http://makespace.org/wiki/index.php/Currently_active_and_interesting

Laura

On 16 October 2012 23:48, Rich Wareham <rj...@cantab.net> wrote:

Question from one who was never really involved in editing a wiki: There a
lots of pages that are obviously aimed at discussing things - i.e. the
community values and rules pages. Should we actually edit the pages itself
by adding remarks or should we use the discussion-tab to start a
page-related discussion and only update the actual page once the discussion
came to some kind of result?

Because wiki's are versioned, it's really easy to roll back changes, so I
tend to just go ahead and edit. If you think it maybe a contentious issue,
maybe start a discussion before hand, or start a thread on here to discuss
particular questions.

On 17 October 2012 09:19, Uwe Borowski <ubor...@gmail.com> wrote:

My rule of thumb: if a page is itself a discussion, write on the page.
If you want to discuss the content of the page but the page is
informative rather than discussive, use the 'discussion' tab.

--
Dr Rich Wareham

Thanks for all the above advice.

The Questy captcha - which asks trivial questions - is a bit annoying
but was necessary to prevent spam during the many months the wiki was
idle. Now that the wiki is getting more regular use, spam should be
easier to spot so I may remove the captcha.

There are several pages which use camel case for their titles, for
example AdviceOnBanking and CharitableObjects. This is a habit
probably acquired from older wiki software like TWiki and isn't
necessary on MediaWiki - in fact it stops search from working
properly. Try searching for 'Charitable' - the CharitableObjects page
is way down the list as it doesn't match on the title. Not a big deal,
but use spaces in titles rather than camel case if you can.

Jim

On 16 October 2012 23:48, Rich Wareham <rj...@cantab.net> wrote:

As I have been looking into Wiki-related stuff today an other question in
this fairly old thread: As it was mentioned before our start-page is not
very nice since it is filled with lots of information. An other problem our
Wiki has (in my opinion) is that it isn't very easy to navigate to the most
important pages.

I think it would be much nicer if we could modify the sidebar to allow easy
jumps to things like "Equipment", "Policies" and things like that. Have a
look at the Nottinghack-Wiki<http://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/NottingHack> to
see what I mean! Existing subsections like the "Toolbox" can also be
minimized - which again helps to make the Wiki look tidier.

Question: Is that something that we should change? And if so: Who can
actually change that? Unlike for editing normal pages I think you need
admin-rights to modify the sidebar (or an admin has to give a user the
related right).

Assuming your username is uboro, you are now an admin!

You probably need to edit
http://makespace.org/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar

Cool. I will have a closer look and try not to mess things up ;)

Ok - I have added a few of the existing pages to the navigation which
should server as a "quick fix" to help finding stuff in the Wiki. However -
I think it would be nice to implement some bigger changes which will not be
quite as quick:

   - Appearance. At the moment the default skin is "MonoBook" which does
   not support the collapsible sidebar (one would have to do some mods/hacks
   to add it via JS or PHP). An easy fix would be to change the default skin
   to "Vector" which does support that (after setting a parameter in the
   config as far as I understand). I also think it looks better: Makespace-Wiki
   with Vector-Skin<http://makespace.org/wiki/index.php?title=Makespace&useskin=vector> .
   However - the problem is that changing the default skin just affects new
   users or people who are not logged in. Existing users would either have to
   change the setting under "Appearance" in the "Preferences" or someone would
   have to run a maintenance script to change the default skin for all users.
   Someone who knows what he/she is doing could probably do that in 5min - but
   I don't.
   - Main page. At the moment there is lots of information on the main
   page. Some of it should probably not be there with so much detail and
   should be moved to separate pages (see my next point). I also think some
   information there is outdated as we are now officially open. Instead of the
   layout-pic (which looks very sterile and empty) it might be more inviting
   to have some pictures of a space filled with people making stuff.
   - Pages. At the moment I just linked some existing pages (namely
   "People", "Projects", "Equipment", "Infrastructure" and "Policies" to the
   navigation. I removed "Random page" (unless someone thinks that is useful
   for our type of wiki?) and "Help" (as it had no contents anyways). I think
   it would be better to have some pages that bring more content together in
   some kind of overview i.e. "The Space" (for "Infrastructure", "Equipment",
   "Layout" and some overall explanation on what the space offers), "The
   Makers" (for "People", their "Projects" and also the "Skills") and
   something like "The Rules" (for "Policies", "Rules" and general guidelines
   on how to do stuff). I also think there should be some page to link to
   "Events" and activities Makespace as a whole is doing.

So much for some first ideas. It would be good to get some input -
especially from the people who set the Wiki up as I don't just want to
change stuff that someone else has done in a certain way for certain
reasons...

Hi
The new skin looks good and I agree on your points about the information. For me the main page should be a brief summary and navigation to the rest of the site. The 3D view of the space is great but to my mind it should be on a descriptive page about the space. That would give us more room for more links etc.

Steve

Yes, I've also thought the Wiki could do with an overhaul: tidying up the
structure, removing old (no longer needed) pages, making sure information
isn't hidden away in orphaned pages, etc. Because this requires, I think, a
comparatively large-scale reorganisation of lots of pages, I didn't want to
throw everything around by myself -- would it perhaps make sense to have a
short "wiki planning meeting" to discuss and agree on a structure we want ?

Could one of the admins add a favicon to the wiki pages? (with lots of tabs
open that's very helpful to remind you what that background tab was...)
Either the one from the main makespace website (
http://makespace.org/wp-content/themes/delicate/images/icons/makespac...)
or the attached one which has the same colours as the logo on the top left
of the wiki pages (in fact it is that one, sans text and scaled down).
Thanks!

makespace_favicon.png 2K Download