[Wikipedia-l] RE: Some answers and more questions for the gang

Julie's comments preceded by ------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 19:56:49 -0500 To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com From: Vicki Rosenzweig &lt;vr(a)redbird.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Suggestions from Magnus, Mark, and Jimbo Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com At 03:16 PM 2/21/02 -0800, Julie Kemp wrote: I'm not sure I speak customer, but one of the things I've done as an editor is translate, including between techies and non-techies, so I'll try. ----That used to be my job, too...which is why I find this frustrating. But not as much as about a week ago! ;-) I don't know the answer to this. Users are intelligent beings. That they don't speak tech doesn't change this, any more than my not speaking Chinese makes me stupid. -----Um....I was speaking from a training perspective. One has to assume absolutely no knowledge as well as a desire to know only what immediately affects the user, in order to make sure that the info can be assimilated by everybody. Perhaps intelligent wasn't the best word choice -- but having dealt with users a lot, my experience has been that some of the smartest people I've met (except the techs) turn glassy-eyed when faced with technical details. The information should be there for people who actually have an interest in software design, etc., but my experience in training has taught me that too much information (without understanding it fully) leads to a lot more frustration and a LOT of requests for changes that drive programmers up the wall. Plus, most users (of any software) really do have a profound lack of interest in how the program works -- they just want it up and running. Kind of like car owners -- most folks just want the car to run, and do the least they can themselves to keep it up and running. (oil? Water? Huh? ;-) ) Okay, but I don't think it helps to suggest that we're creating an encyclopedia written and edited primarily by the unintelligent. <snip> No. A namespace is a set of articles. "Talk:" is a namespace. So is "User:" Like the main wikipedia, they can have unlimited numbers of articles within them. -----That helps immensely -- now, when an article is created in the main wikipedia namespace, does it not automatically create a related talk page in the "talk:" namespace? I'd like to be able to explain this in a way that keeps people from adding /Talk at the bottom of all "their" articles. The parentheses are to distinguish between two or more things of the same name. Rather than have subpages, the wikipedia now uses a "flat" namespace--everything is on the same level. (The following examples are invented, probably not reflecting current actual wikipedia content.) "Niger (river)" and "Niger (country)" distinguish between two entities of the same name. Sometimes we can avoid parentheses by careful naming: the former article could be named "River Niger," for example. But neither is part of the other. I don't think we have subpages anymore; if I'm wrong, please, would one of the programmers correct me? ----we don't Does it function that way, though? We allow the specific existence of "Talk" pages--but we don't want other subpages. If we make it look and talk like a duck, and call it a duck, people will start creating a whole flock of other waterfowl. I hope some of this helps. -----It does. And I think that it just needs to be more accessible. -- Vicki Rosenzweig vr(a)redbird.org http://www.redbird.org -----And from Magnus: I expanded the http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia:PHP_script_FAQ page a little. Please check if this is sufficient (for the questions asked, of course). Feel free to write a manual (or something) in your own words, based on your experiences and this page. If you do so, it would be nice to put it into the wikipedia namespace. To do this, just call it [[wikipedia:My little manual]] instead of [[My little manual]] ;) ----Read what you've written, and I think it still needs to be less techie. What if I just wrote out a bunch of text (a user translation, so to speak) and sent it to one of you guys/gals to proof, and then you could create a "Changes to the System" or "New System features" special page. I say this because that way it would be really obvious. The problem is that, unless people know where to look, they don't know how to search... ;-) For example, PHP script FAQ assumes that users know what PHP script is -- and that it has something to do with posting articles. I would also take what you and Vicki and Mark have explained about namespaces, weed it a bit, and then NOT use the word namespace so often. Even if not accurate, I think there are probably non-tech words that are more easily understood -- analogies can be our friends! ----Also, would it be possible to have a link on every page (at least for now) to the Bug reports? When I hit an error, it would be so much nicer to be able to describe it immediately, rather than finding "utilities", "bugs", go back and forth several times to make sure I documented everything... Or maybe just put a "utilities" link on everypage (or in the side bar. Or add more questions to the FAQ page; we'll try to answer them as customer as we can... ----Actually, I think it would be good to duplicate the info in several places...people approach things in different ways. There are still people who don't know what FAQs are! Thanks to all of you guys (in the both-genders-inclusive sense) for your help!! Julie _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com