A few fundamental decisions need to be made so the conversion script
can produce a result that minimises future effort.
How will tips be found? Can there be a contents page? If so, the
script should generate a suitable list, perhaps for hand-tweaking.
Currently, the URL of the sample tip has form:
http:.../Tip_1:_the_super_star
One of the following would be better:
http:.../the_super_star
http:.../Tip_1
http:.../Tip_1_the_super_star
In thinking about the tip URL, consider how tips should evolve.
Would tips simply be added, so potentially there could be fifty
independent tips on searching? Or (particularly with important
topics like searching), would we hope that one day there would be
a single "search tips" page with links to tips on different aspects
of searching.
The sample tip starts with an info box:
author
created
complexity
as of Vim (version)
rating
As has been mentioned, the info box is pretty intrusive. The page
should start with the tip. Maintaining the data in the box seems
unecessarily difficult to me - can we omit it? We can't maintain the
rating. If retained, move the box to the end of the tip.
What will be done with the comments? As several people have noted,
many of the comments are not helpful for a potential user of a tip.
I think that eventually some brutal editing should omit most
comments. Ideally, we would incorporate useful comments into the
tip. Meanwhile, we could delete unhelpful comments while retaining
and rewording and reordering helpful comments.
If people agree that comments should be severely edited, I suggest
that the script should make the job easier by omitting the "By...
On..." box and replacing it with a simple tip separator. Using 'edit
this page' shows that currently each "By... On..." box occupies
eight source lines.
It might be helpful to temporarily retain the author and date by
replacing the "By... On..." box with a single source line (normal
text), something like this:
-----{By sample user on March 8, 2001 14:51}-----
I don't see any benefit from moving the comments to the discussion
page. Why set up the wiki in the first place unless there is an
intention to improve the tips? The discussion page should be
restricted to serious pondering of what editors should do with this
tip, and with related tips. The "Great tip" comments are just noise.
John
