On Thursday 15 February 2007 14:31, Francis Giannaros wrote:
Hi,
[improving the state of the openSUSE.org wiki]
> Any thoughts?
sorry for joining this discussion late...
Here are my 2 cents. I will try to structure this mail, because I think
we are facing several different problems.
############################
# Problems on openSUSE.org #
############################
* Finding information
- difficult to navigate
- no entry points for different target groups
- SDB vs. HowTos vs. Tips vs. ...
- only a basic search function
- too many categories
- duplicated articles
* Content quality
- no QA mechanism
- duplicates
- quality/quantity differs a lot on different topics (libzypp vs.
package management)
* Different target groups
- which target groups exist
- what are the needs of the different target groups
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Finding information
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What we are facing here is IMHO a general (Media)Wiki problem. MediaWiki
is developed for an encyclopedia. Users coming to wikipedia usually
want to know something about a very specific topic. They type in an
appropriate keyword and end up with the _one_ article containing the
information they are searching for. There is simply no need for a
sophisticated navigation.
People coming to openSUSE.org IMHO have got more general interest, such
as finding information about the installation or about how to set up
WLAN. To satisfy these customers, structure and navigation is needed.
Generally the focus of a wiki is on collaboration and content and not on
structure and navigation. Therefore organizing content on a wiki is a
very challenging task.
So what tools does the wiki offer to organize stuff:
- Namespaces
- Categories
- Portal pages
(correct me if I forgot something)
Namespaces:
* Pro
- search can be limited to namespace
- namespaces can only be added by sysops, therefore the number of
namespaces will not constantly grow
- Standard Wiki tool
* Contra
- Pages need to be moved from the general namespace to a specific one
Foo -> Bar:Foo
- namespaces can only be added by sysops ;)
- default namespaces are almost useless for average openSUSE user
(Talk, Election, MediaWiki,...)
- a document can only belong to one namespace
Categories:
* Pro
- everybody can invent new categories
- it's easy to assign a document to a category
- a document can belong to several categories
- standard Wiki tool
* Contra
- search cannot be limited to categories
- since everybody can invent new categories, their number is
constantly growing
Portal pages:
* Pro
- everybody can invent new portal pages
- can target different audiences
- no layout / content restrictions
* Contra
- since everybody can invent new portal pages, their number is
constantly growing
- it's difficult to get an overview of all portal pages
==> Conclusions / Action Items:
- discuss creating of new Namespaces
- create a Namespace for portal pages
- clean up categories
- continue working on the portal pages
- delete / merge duplicates
- investigate better search engine
- unify SDB, HowTos, Tips
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2. Content quality
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would go with Pflodo on this topic - edit, edit, edit ;-).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Different target groups
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Especially when creating portal pages we need to know which target
groups we would like to address. This will not only affect the content
of the portal pages, but probably the way it is presented to the user
as well (e.g. procedure vs. list vs. table, ...).
==> Conclusions / Action Items:
- discuss target groups topic
--
Regards
Frank
Frank Sundermeyer, Technical Writer, Documentation
SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg
Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/
SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg)
"Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert
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