On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 12:05:49AM -0400, The Editor wrote: > 3) The lousy quality of the FAQ page is no proof the mailing list > works. It's just proof we have a lousy FAQ system.
> The fact we frequently get asked the same questions on the mailing > list is probably better proof the mailing list doesn't work. No, you have that backwards. > I've tried the archives many times. They don't work for me. It's > hard to find stuff. PmWiki can and should do better. Much better. Me, I've found the archives and found them helpful. YMMV. > 4) While the cookbook helps some it is itself getting a bit unweildy. > Pm has been slowly making some good changes in this area, but I have > thought for a long time we need to start categorizing the information > there. Perhaps a section for recipe scripts, a section for config > questions, one for markup issues. Rankings, culling out stuff not > maintained, whatever. Information is only as good as its taxonomy. > Well, I don't know. Sounded good. But effective classification helps > alot. The cookbook (IMO) is far over extended, and would be much > better if it stuck to specific kinds of solutions, etc. There does need to be refactoring -- but I don't see any volunteers stepping up for this. Perhaps partly because it's such a massive change that nobody feels they have the authority to do it (except for PM, and he's got better things to do at the moment). The chief problem that I see is that we need to make the required information *easy to find*. But what *are* the best ways of grouping the information? That and more tutorial-like pages, which is what started off this discussion in the first place. > 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. If you > read my post, I suggested we do one in PmWiki. We can keep it as > editable as we want, so if info needs to be changed, you just change > it. Delete a thread. Add a comment. Whatever you want. With all > the bright thinkers on this list we should be able to come up with > something! Strong words there! I dare you to justify this bald assertion. You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you haven't proven in any way that a forum is good. So far as I can see, all a forum is is a lame kind of web-based mailing list which is harder to use. I cannot see *any* benefit from a forum. What makes a forum better-organized than a wiki? The same amount of discipline is required (so far as I can see) to make a forum well-organized as it takes to make a wiki well-organized. In all cases, the difficulty is in taxonomy and grouping pages/threads in a way that makes the right page/thread easy to find. Kathryn Andersen -- _--_|\ | Kathryn Andersen <http://www.katspace.com> / \ | \_.--.*/ | GenFicCrit mailing list <http://www.katspace.com/gen_fic_crit/> v | ------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere Maranatha! | -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe _______________________________________________ pmwiki-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
