Tutorial Links Lost

[Paul S. Person]

I recently accessed my tutorial on over-large code segment errors and
found that /nothing links to it/.

Apparently, someone reorganized the page pointed to by the link on
http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Resources#Tutorials (that is,
http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Tutorials) so that it no longer
displays "the index page of all articles marked as a Tutorial" but
rather a page listing some, but clearly not all, of them.

I realize that this change was intended to categorize the various
tutorials by category. However, it is no substitute for a page that
actually contains links to all of the tutorials, as opposed to those
whoever did this felt were worth creating links to.

I am reporting this in case there is some reason for it that I am
unaware of. If there is not, I will edit
http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Tutorials to add a link to my
tutorial. But that won't help with any others; it's been a while, but
I am fairly certain that mine is not the only tutorial that is now
orphaned.
--
"Nature must be explained in
her own terms through
the experience of our senses."

[Peter C. Chapin]

On 2012-01-16 13:20, Paul S. Person wrote:

> I am reporting this in case there is some reason for it that I am
> unaware of. If there is not, I will edit
> http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Tutorials to add a link to my
> tutorial. But that won't help with any others; it's been a while, but
> I am fairly certain that mine is not the only tutorial that is now
> orphaned.

There is a special page that shows all the orphaned documents. That
could be used to round up anyone else who is missing.

Peter

[Paul S. Person]

Rereading the new page, the intent appears to be to only include
step-by-step tutorials. However, I believe mine would qualify (unless
they really mean "checklists"), so I suspect that those included are
those of interest to the page's authors.

I am thinking of doing two things, due to time contraints:

1) Repointing the line that /claims/ to point at a page showing every
article in Category:Tutorial to a page that /actually/ does so.
Provided I can figure out how to set up such a page, of course. I
suppose the MediaWiki site can tell me how.

2) Precede the existing link to a line saying something like "For an
organized list of some tutorials ,,,".

Does that seem like a reasonable thing to do? It might confuse users,
but then, it would also offer a choice.

I wish I had time to do more, but wgml really has priority.

[Peter C. Chapin]

On 2012-01-23 12:42, Paul S. Person wrote:

> Does that seem like a reasonable thing to do? It might confuse users,
> but then, it would also offer a choice.

I think anything reasonable sounds good as long as all the tutorials are
available somehow.

> I wish I had time to do more, but wgml really has priority.

Yes, I think so.

Peter

[Paul S. Person]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:15:53 -0500, "Peter C. Chapin"
<PCh...@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote:

>On 2012-01-23 12:42, Paul S. Person wrote:
>
>> Does that seem like a reasonable thing to do? It might confuse users,
>> but then, it would also offer a choice.
>
>I think anything reasonable sounds good as long as all the tutorials are
>available somehow.

Actually, it was quite easy.

One of the Special Pages was "Categories". The Category:Tutorials page
exists and it is linked to by the User Resources page -- but from
"Documentation and Manuals", not "Tutorials". So adjusting this was
quite simple.

I admit to adding some editorial matter to explain why we have two
links names "Tutorials". Perhaps someone else can complete the
annotated page by categorizing and adding the items missing from the
Category page.

[tim_c]

I probably did some reorganisation but this mostly was things like
sorting into alpha order.

There were problems with tutorials, knew that. To do with me? I hope not.

A question is what is a tutorial?
There can be human links but mostly it is automatic on tags.

On investigating it looks like bugs in the wiki software.

For example, going to an orphaned page which looked likely to be a
tutorial it is indeed tagged as a tutorial, follow the tag and it goes
to tutorials where it is linked.

An orphan that is linked to? :-)

spidering the server, doesn't look bad so far.

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:54:16 +0000, tim_c <t...@gpsl.net> wrote:

>I probably did some reorganisation but this mostly was things like
>sorting into alpha order.
>
>There were problems with tutorials, knew that. To do with me? I hope not.
>
>A question is what is a tutorial?
>There can be human links but mostly it is automatic on tags.
>
>On investigating it looks like bugs in the wiki software.
>
>For example, going to an orphaned page which looked likely to be a
>tutorial it is indeed tagged as a tutorial, follow the tag and it goes
>to tutorials where it is linked.
>
>An orphan that is linked to? :-)

This shows that the Category page is linked to the article. It does
not show that the article is linked to the Category page. I suspect
that the Category pages are constructed dynamically. Thus, the links
to the articles don't exist unless the page is accessed and so are not
taken into account in determining whether or not a page is orphaned. I
could be wrong about this, of course.

The Category page has a brief introduction and is, indeed, sorted in
alphabetical order. Good job! This has the advantage of minimal upkeep
and effort on the part of the tutorial writer.

The other page categorizes the tutorials it covers and links to each
directly. This has its advantages: it makes it easier to find a
tutorial on a particular topic and the topics that are not covered
reveal subjects for future tutorials. But only if all tutorials are
included in it, which they are not.