Ideas to grow the wiki

[Olof Bjarnason]

I think we are missing out on an opportunity to grow the wiki as we
debate stuff on this list.

Does someone have ideas on how make the wiki grow faster?

http://wiki.softwarecraftsmanship.org

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[DThrasher]

I just joined the software craftsmanship mailing list. I jumped over
to the wiki in response to your question, and my initial reaction is:
Where do I begin?

It's not clear where to start reading if you're a new visitor like me.
It's also not clear what areas need editing or expanding if you're an
existing member of the wiki.

Getting a wiki to critical mass is very hard. It requires constant
attention at the beginning, until a real community starts to form.
Dean

[Olof Bjarnason]

2009/9/23 DThrasher <dean.t...@gmail.com>:

>
> I just joined the software craftsmanship mailing list. I jumped over
> to the wiki in response to your question, and my initial reaction is:
> Where do I begin?
>
> It's not clear where to start reading if you're a new visitor like me.
> It's also not clear what areas need editing or expanding if you're an
> existing member of the wiki.
>
> Getting a wiki to critical mass is very hard. It requires constant
> attention at the beginning, until a real community starts to form.
> Dean

Thanks for sharing!

I guess a TODO-page would be one idea then?

http://wiki.softwarecraftsmanship.org/doku.php/todo

>
> On Sep 23, 3:02 am, Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarna...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think we are missing out on an opportunity to grow the wiki as we
>> debate stuff on this list.
>>
>> Does someone have ideas on how make the wiki grow faster?
>>
>> http://wiki.softwarecraftsmanship.org
>>
>> --
>> twitter.com/olofb
>> olofb.wordpress.com
>> olofb.wordpress.com/tag/english
>
> >
>

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[DThrasher]

The TODO page is a good start. I like the changes you made to the
front page as well.

I guess it's time for me to pitch in and do my part. :-)
Dean

On Sep 23, 11:51 am, Olof Bjarnason <olof.bjarna...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/9/23 DThrasher <dean.thras...@gmail.com>:

[Olof Bjarnason]

2009/9/24 DThrasher <dean.t...@gmail.com>:

>
> The TODO page is a good start. I like the changes you made to the
> front page as well.
>
> I guess it's time for me to pitch in and do my part. :-)
> Dean

Please do :)

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[Steven Smith]

Does the doku wiki support a common navigation, or do we have to add
various links to every page? I think some things would do well in the
common nav, like:

1) FAQ
2) Recommended Reading
3) Events and Conferences
4) Companies
5) Bloggers

or something like that (in whatever order).

...

OK, so I RTFM'd and found this:
http://www.dokuwiki.org/namespaces
http://www.dokuwiki.org/index
http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:nstoc?s[]=table&s[]=contents

It looks like organizing pages into namespaces and adding a
namespace's table of contents to each page would be the simplest way
to achieve better navigation on the wiki.

Steve

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[Olof Bjarnason]

2009/9/24 Steven Smith <ssmith...@gmail.com>:

>
> Does the doku wiki support a common navigation, or do we have to add
> various links to every page?  I think some things would do well in the
> common nav, like:
>
> 1) FAQ
> 2) Recommended Reading
> 3) Events and Conferences
> 4) Companies
> 5) Bloggers
>
> or something like that (in whatever order).
>
> ...
>
> OK, so I RTFM'd and found this:
> http://www.dokuwiki.org/namespaces
> http://www.dokuwiki.org/index
> http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:nstoc?s[]=table&s[]=contents

It would be really nice of you if you could put simple instructions
describing these things at the wiki, geared towards those
namespaces/other things we already. Or are we lacking all of this?

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[Jeff Dickey]

Hi, all,

I've been keeping a wiki for my own use (to keep my head on in an allegedly
straight fashion) for several years now, and I've been using Dokuwiki for
this and several client projects for 3-4 years now.

Namespaces in DW are a great organizational aid *if* they're used with some
forethought. It helps to be ruthlessly Linnaean in your taxonomy. There is
little penalty for building deep hierarchies rather than just a "bag of
reasonably related bits" (which is what most casual Wikis eventually turn
into).

As always, and unsurprisingly for us, some best practices seem apparent.
When DW is given a namespace as a link (with or without a terminating
colon), it follows the rules specified here
(http://www.dokuwiki.org/namespaces#namespace_default_linking) to resolve
that namespace into a link which references a page. So what fairly obviously
falls out of this is what I and a few other users I've seen do, which can be
illustrated here, with * indicating a namespace and - a page:
* ...
* ops_and_maintenance_notes
* imac
* installed_apps
- komodo_edit
- ...
- start (for 'installed_apps')
- start (for 'imac')
- start (for 'ops_and_maintenance_notes')
* ...

Each namespace always has a 'start' page, which will be the default page for
that namespace per the rules linked to above. That 'start' page should have
descriptive text that essentially justifies the namespace in terms of the
organizational needs and usage of the wiki. It should have links in it to
each page in the namespace, especially if the wiki isn't using one of the
several good 'menu' plugins for DW (which I see the SC wiki isn't :( ).

One significant benefit of this organization is that, as the wiki expands,
topics which start as pages can be replaced by namespaces, with *none* of
the linking Wiki pages needing to change; instead of linking directly to the
target page, their link will resolve to the 'start' page of the new
namespace.

And yes, all this should be in the SC Wiki somewhere - both to help new
users understand How Things Work and to serve as a living policy statement.
One of the things DW has historically fallen down on when it's used by a
large, diverse user base is that there isn't a MediaWiki-style "discussion"
page linked to each article page in the default configuration. Like many
(most?) DW "deficiencies", that can be rectified through the use of a
plugin, available from http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:discussion.

I don't think it's practical anymore to have a "community" online without
some sort of Wiki; mailing-list archives are useful, but they lack the
discoverability and semantics of a good Wiki. Good Wikis, therefore, tend to
have (and require) both a vibrant community and a knowledgeable, benevolent
editor (curator/dictator) to come along and help clean things up as needed.

Just my two rupiah worth...

Jeff

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[Jason Catena]

> I don't think it's practical anymore to have a "community" online without
> some sort of Wiki; mailing-list archives are useful, but they lack the
> discoverability and semantics of a good Wiki. Good Wikis, therefore, tend to
> have (and require) both a vibrant community and a knowledgeable, benevolent
> editor (curator/dictator) to come along and help clean things up as needed.

Mailing lists don't tend to condense the knowledge of the community in
a form friendly to introduce to new members. (Why spend so much time
on one mail?) By the same token, mailing lists are great at exploring
different points of view. (A few clicks, press send, and now I've
publicly disagreed with you.) Fortunately, many a community (or field
of study, or train of thought) has at least one person interested in
reconciling its confused history, if only for their own benefit.

> Jeff

Jason Catena

[Olof Bjarnason]

2009/10/1 Jeff Dickey <dicke...@gmail.com>:

Would you be so kind to put simple instructions to regarding these
issues on the SC wiki?

I know I've not followed any sensible page-naming-convention so far,
I'd really like to learn this stuff to make growing the wiki more
manageable.

The discussion plugin seems like a good idea too.

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[Robert Hanson]

6. A Search

When I look at the home page, I am not sure how I would find anything
in the wiki in order to use it as a reference.

Rob

[Olof Bjarnason]

2009/10/1 Robert Hanson <iamrobe...@gmail.com>:

>
> 6. A Search
>
> When I look at the home page, I am not sure how I would find anything
> in the wiki in order to use it as a reference.

True. Until we get an extension/adding/plugin/whataretheycalled in the
wiki, you can use google "site:wiki.softwarecraftsmanship.org
search-terms".

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