Erik Moeller wrote:
Dan-
If the documentation used a "Help:" namespace, then none of the links would have to be updated, and all an administrator of a new site would need to do would be to download the documentation database dump and upload it.
Yes, a Help: namespace would probably make sense. Compare:
Help:Edit conflicts Wikipedia:Edit conflicts Help:Editing Wikipedia:Editing help Help:Sections Wikipedia:SectionsBesides, our own spin-off projects have the exact same problems as Memory Alpha when it comes to these help texts.
Offering this for download would be very easy if it contains no self- references and is nicely isolated. For bonus points, write a script that automatically fetches and installs the latest version of the help texts (preserving older versions and warning if they exist).
The Help: namespace seems to be a workable idea, but only for the more mechanical issues, and not for policy issues. At Wikisource there has been a demand for this sort of thing, and it would be helpful to be able to import a few files from one of the other projects. For the user it would be helpful to know that the same query format will achieve the same result on all the the projects. Perhaps too just typing "help:" (with the mandatory colon, at least in Wiktionary) in the search box and hitting "Go" would give a list of available help files.
What to do with "Help talk:"? Should they point to the Meta talk pages?
No. I expect that after the initial setup these may evolve differently in each project. Each should have its own "Help talk:" page. Meta would have the template page, and its talk page should be devoted to more general issues about the template.
If everyone agrees, I can set up the Help: namespace on meta, and you people can try to come up with a site-independent structure and contents for it. All that needs to be done then is add the Help: namespace to the default, export it into a tarball regularly, and optionally, provide the aforementioned import script.
Regular exports after the initial one would be a problem when it is independently editable in each project.
Regarding translations, since Meta is supposed to be multilingual, we'll just have to set up separate namespaces for each language there, e.g. Hilfe:, Aide: etc.
Certainly.
As for the policies, this would be the kind of stuff I'd like to see in a web-based installation script (phpBB like), where you then could just select some key policies
[ ] NPOV [ ] Naming conventions [ ] FictionAnd the script would automatically import these into the $wgSiteName namespace. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know.
Policies will diverge consderably more than mechanical instructions. Even NPOV, where there is a clear understanding that it should apply to all projects, can have different interpretations. It tends to be less of a problem in the non-encyclopedic projects, and instructions should deal with how it integrates with the vision of particular projects. Naming conventions will have even more variations.
Ec