On Dec 27, 2003, at 10:08 AM, Agon S. Buchholz wrote:

Dan Carlson schrieb:

...

The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of the wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of Wikipedia.

I agree. That's the reason why I started to restructure and rewrite the documentation (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation).

The problem with the current official documentation (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide) is, that it's not a "User's Guide", but more of a mixture of Installation, Configuration, User's, Administrator's, and partial even Developer's Guide. According to MediaWiki terminology, a "User" is also an administrator; however, it will take the normal user some time to distinguish this wording.

I've noticed the same thing. And though the English Wikipedia has a decent page through the Policies and Guidelines that provides a partial list, it's still not always useful in connecting to all the appropriate pages.

I'm trying to write documents for different targeted users; people, who want to know what MediaWiki is, should read a mostly non-technical overview (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Introduction); people who want to write articles should read the User's Guide (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_User%27s_Guide), explaining how to edit and write pages; people who want to set up a MediaWiki site should read the Administrator's Guide (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Administrator%27s_Guide), explaining hw to install and confugure the software, and so on. These documents have to be structured from the scratch, be written for different levels of experience, and stay focused for specific tasks related to the work of these target groups.

That's a very good idea; I'd be willing to pitch in and help out in rewriting/reorganizing some of that data.

...

But, considering that the MediaWiki software is made publicly available for download and for establishing other websites, I wonder if it might be useful to have some kind of help "module" -- that is, a collected copy of the documentation pages that can be easily copied and set up on other sites. Possibly, this could also add a new "Help:" namespace which would help distinguish those pages for the general users.

Nice idea. But do we want another namespace?

True, another namespace will add some more complication. But take a look at the following list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: List_of_articles_in_the_Wikipedia_namespace

Not only is that a daunting amount of information for people like me who are trying to set up separate wiki sites with a new name, but it's also a job that is complicated by the fact that we have to go through and change all the internal links in the documentation to match our new namespace. 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. And it would also help separate the site-specific pages (like Wikipedia:) from those "meta" type pages that are about how a user (that is, a site visitor) can operate the MediaWiki interface.

Possibly, it would be a good idea to make it easy to change the name of the website in the documentation, or else make the distribution copy of the documentation vague so that it can apply to all sites. This would require some rewriting, but it probably wouldn't be as big a deal (either way).

I had this idea to go along with it -- I don't know how feasible it is or whether the MW developers would want to use it, but... what if there were another variable added that can be included inline with the wiki text? I'm thinking of those items like "number of articles" or "current date" and so forth. If another one of those were the website name (already a variable for the web browser title bar), then the variable could be used in place of referring to the website in any documentation text, and thus would *automatically* be updated.

I suppose this all assumes that the people who are using the software want to start out with the same established policies that Wikipedia currently uses, but from my perspective, that's exactly what I'm trying to do, at least in the initial stages of the site's growth.

Thanks, Dan Carlson Administrator, Memory Alpha http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/

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:Sections

Besides, 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
   [ ] Fiction

And 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