On 2/16/08, Robert Melton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Background: I am the channel owner of #vim on Freenode, I am a long-time vim
> user, full time developer, and the owner of http://vi-improved.org among
> other sites. I have setup multiple wikis for business and personal use over
> the last decade, generally I acted as an agent of change within the
> organization I worked for bringing in and getting wikis (and proper source
> control, documentation, etc) and up and running -- all 4 organizations I
> have setup with wikis still maintain them, with thousands (and in one case,
> tens of thousands) of pages. This means I have had to deal with getting
> buy-off and getting people to actually use them, a fun challenge.
>
> The reason I am writing this little-post (I was advised to by John Beckett)
> is a plea to change the front-page (and to a lesser degree, the focus) of
> the wiki. Beyond that, to open-up the culture to be less "tip" focused, and
> more vim focused, in order get people more involved. So let me outline what
> I think are the main problems with the site as is.
>
> #1. It doesn't address the primary reason people come to the site, to get
> help. The lack of a focus being put on what I imagine (please correct me if
> I am wrong) the vast majority of people who come to the site seems somewhat
> misguided. Most of the features on the front-page seem to make it very
> busy, as if someone is looking to "browse" tips when they come to the site,
> which I think is unlikely, they need help! Now, when I say "FAQ" -- I don't
> mean the entire VIM FAQ, I mean let grow naturally -- let people add
> questions, the common questions will be answered, and you link to the real
> VIM wiki for the less common questioons.
>
> #2. It doesn't encourage anyone to contribute. It is overwhelming, and
> intimidating. Beyond that, generally you create a tip in an anonymous
> fashion, no ego stroking. It might sound petty, but being able to attach
> the work you do to your identity is a powerful piece of encouragement. Now,
> as John pointed out to me, there isn't anything wrong with doing it via
> userpage, but I think we need to go beyond and specific recommend people do
> it that way. The trick with a wiki is getting that "first" bit of usage,
> creating a user page, etc -- once you do that, you got your foot in the
> door, makes it much easier to create that second page.
>
> So, my concept is basically, change the front-page to do three major things.
>
> #1. Answer the common questions, add a FAQ (right on the front-page would be
> great), add links with specific "sections" of problems. File format issues,
> syntax highlighting issues, etc. Once these sections are defined, it is
> easy to add new "tips" to them. Also, link out in an obvious way to places
> where people can get more help (#vim on freenode, the vim user list, etc).
> Don't bury these next steps, make them obvious and easy to find.
>
> #2. Encourage people to create vim.wikia.com user accounts, and start to add
> their own content via their personal userpage. This is something I have
> done with every wiki I have implemented, make the persons userpage be their
> personal safe zone, where they can add content rapidly and safely without a
> ton of concern about formatting and perfection. Fear is the enemy of
> contribution. Don't jump on them for formatting or other mistakes. :)
>
> #3. Try to create a nice cross-connect with the other vim-help resources,
> and reach out to the authors of tutorials and other valuable vim content,
> and see if putting it on the wiki would be acceptable. For example, using
> the vim.wikia.com site as the web-resource for the #vim channel would be
> fine with me. I would just need a nice little section, and our community
> would maintain it. Cross-connects and more user-generated content will
> drive up "direct links" to the site, which will hopefully bring in some new
> contributors (assuming we make it easy to contribute, and have an obvious
> path).
>
> These are my random two cents, take them for what they are worth. :)
>
> --Metacosm)
Here's my take on things:
#1 Although many people come to this site to get help for a specific
topic, many more (like myself) DO come just to browse. I like to just
hit "random tip" a lot and see what gems I uncover. From what I've
seen so far, I think the focus of the site has been primarily for
people who have a somewhat-okay idea of what they are doing, aren't
really having any SPECIFIC problems using Vim, but want to see some
pointers to improve their use and make them more efficient. If they
wanted help, they would probably use :help or :helpgrep, or use the
vim_use mailing list (as we suggest they do). Perhaps we should
emphasize this on the front page.
That being said, I can certainly see where you are going. I love the
idea of a brief FAQ, or at least a highly visible LINK to an FAQ on
the main page. However, it should be kept very brief to avoid clutter,
and the bulk of the FAQ should lie elsewhere. The search could
certainly be improved. Perhaps instead of an FAQ, we could have a "for
help with..." section, for example:
For help with...
* navigating within a document, see {category}
* editing files in a project, see {category}
* integrating with the system clipboard, see {tips}
However, I think we need to fill the needs of both user groups. I
personally don't want to see the wiki (or even the front page) become
all about getting help, because a lot of the time, experienced Vim
users will visit this page to improve their skills, even if they have
no pressing issues at the moment. This is part of the reason I created
the featured tip page, and the reason for the "did you know?" section
on the current main page. I would have no problems replacing the
current "featured tip" section with a link to the featured tip page,
but I think the "did you know" section should stay, and be regularly
updated (possibly choosing randomly from a giant, growing list of "did
you know" items?). As a way to better serve both audiences, we should
probably make better use of the "complexity" field of the tip
templates. Currently, I don't think much attention is paid to it.
Perhaps we should replace it with a full-blown category (or add the
category automatically with the template). Regardless, I imagine most
"help" tips would fall in basic, with some in intermediate, while most
"improve your skills" tips would fall in intermediate or advanced
complexity.
#2 While I agree that we could be doing more to encourage
contributions, I don't think we're doing too bad of a job. The tip
templates have had an "author" field ever since I started editing
tips, and any new tips have a template added to them before they are
"officially" accepted, with all the fields filled out. The only
problem with this is that often, the final tip content has so little
of the original author's work left in it, that it's almost laughable
that they still get all the credit. I think there was an idea a while
back to list all the authors, but this is a *wiki* - we want as many
people as possible to edit and review the tips, so obviously we can't
credit all of them!
The "featured tips" page was intended in part as another way to
encourage contributions - a lot of nominations for the featured tip
will probably be from page authors, or people who contributed to the
page. Getting their tip featured will put it right on the front page.
As far as user pages go, a lot of people have some really awesome
stuff in them already (see Ipkiss's "meta tips:"
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Ipkiss/Using_vim_to_edit_tips). I don't
think there are any barriers there! We might do more to encourage this
sort of thing with a "featured user page" or something, but I don't
know how useful that is. I think the real gems (like Ipkiss's page I
mentioned earlier) should be linked from somewhere that people will
see, but to me, a user page is whatever the user wants it to be, and
not that many people need to know about it. The place for tips and
help should remain the wiki itself.
#3 I agree whole-heartedly that we need to have more links, both
external and internal. I try as often as I can to add links to other
related tips where appropriate, to make this wiki seem more like a
wiki and less like a repository. We have the 'help' and 'script'
templates to add even more options for easy linking to external
resources. If there are #vim links that are useful, that's great as
well! But, I think our external links should be either in the context
of a link, or as part of an FAQ or something. I don't think we need a
bunch of links on the main page (although I like the "from Vim help"
section on the current main page, but you're right that an actual FAQ
would probably serve better).
Anyway, as you might be able to tell, I don't want to see the wiki
turn in an entirely new direction or take on a new focus. I do like
the idea of improving the "help" content of the wiki, and think that
you have some very good ideas there. But, that can't be all we do.
Mayhaps we should split the site into 2 "sections" - one for help, one
for tips (with significant overlap and cross-linking, of course).
Currently, every tip (so far as I know) is automatically in the
"VimTip" category. Perhaps the new "help" pages should instead be in a
"VimHelp" category by default, in addition to the other existing
categories. "Help" tips would be especially useful in many cases, and
we've already discussed some places that badly need some:
* Regular expressions. We have a "Searching" category and an "Advanced
Regex" category, but neither are good for general, low-complexity
help. These categories include everything from extremely complex "look
what I can do" patterns, to simple commands/mappings to perform a
repetitive task, but they do not include any basic tutorial-type info
(and I would argue that they shouldn't).
* Mappings. We have a "Mapping" category that we frankly don't know
what to do with. It would be nice to have some basic help about
mapping stuff (what keys you can and cannot map, what special tricks
are needed to map certain keys on certain systems, why you can't use |
and need to use <bar>, etc.) but such tips are few and far between.
Help tips would be great here.
* The error window (or whatever you call the thing you get with
:copen). There are a few tips on using vimgrep in clever ways, on
mappings to make it more useful, etc. but very few that actually point
out what it is and why you should use it.
Anyway, I've babbled enough. Those are my thoughts. I think your ideas
can add a lot to the wiki, but I think we need to be very careful to
focus on that adding, and not subtract too much or even shift focus
too much.
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