English > Feature Suggestions

Reviving the Wiki

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rick.ca:

--- Quote ---I do not have time to study different wiki engines and such, so maybe I just do not see some kind of easy solution thou. Also, if someone has a step by step instruction of adding wiki functionality to the existing forum engine, then it could be of great help.
--- End quote ---

No solution involving separate wiki software is going to be "easy." Some might be "worth the effort"—if the creation, maintenance and administration effort is supplied by users. This is somewhat of a catch-22, as not many users will be willing and able to help unless the solution is easy to use. This was the main reason for my Integrated Help Forum suggestion. It's not particularly elegant, but it's easy to implement and offers virtually no impediment to user participation.

A better solution would be wiki functionality fully integrated with the forum software. That is possible using the WikiStyle SMF theme—which is illustrated rather effectively by the SMF Online Manual. I suppose this would be little more than a polished version of the "Help" forum I suggested—"...topics are 'documents' and replies are 'comments'." The ability to sort topics means they can be presented in any form of TOC, and it seems this should be much easier to do than it is with TikiWiki. You'll also recognize integrating such help documentation with the program is as simple as linking the topic URL's via an HTML help file.

Others here, for reasons I can't fathom, have a strong objection to a solution that allows users to comment on and discuss help topics. It's commonly used elsewhere, and it seems to me a very effective way to engage the user community in the creation and maintenance of effective help documentation.

patch:

--- Quote from: nostra on September 06, 2010, 04:56:57 pm ---I do not see much difference between forum and wiki in regard of providing help to the users. Both can be configured to provide similar functionality and it is equally easy to implement links to any of those in the application.

--- End quote ---
The useful wiki feature for online manual maintenance as I see it are
1) Good page version control tracking who has made changes and easy reversion of changes. This enables liberal delegation of edit rights, encouraging all users to contribute to documentation maintenance. In contrast to a forum where topic header edit rights require administrator privileges which are sensibly only granted to a small fraction of trusted users. The inability to directly fix the documentation without believing knowledge justifies being a moderator and existing administrators agreeing will not increase volunteers to maintain forum documentation.

2) Structures, providing efficient generation of lists / contents. The information content is language independent so only needs to be done once across multiple language versions of the manual

3) Language translation and tracking support is more refined, consistent with the wiki focus on maintaining a reference document vs the forum focus on tracking and storing conversations.

The end result is maintenance of a document in a forum is clearly possible. However it will end up being done by the moderators and in multiple languages. Not a problem for an organisation with a document writer. Also not a problem if nostra, rick and reset are comfortable writing and maintaining it. Or perhaps you are happy with the current level of documentation, noob users support, in which case moving in to the forum environment is probably not to onerous.


--- Quote ---Rick has a good point: providing help topics in the forum is definitely less work to do.
--- End quote ---

Agree administering one site is going to be easier than 2


--- Quote ---At the current state of things I would tend to use forum, but naturally, if some has time to provide a well structured wiki page I could reconsider this.
--- End quote ---
This maybe happening at the moment imo but that is open for debate.


--- Quote ---I do not have time to study different wiki engines and such, so maybe I just do not see some kind of easy solution thou. Also, if someone has a step by step instruction of adding wiki functionality to the existing forum engine, then it could be of great help.

--- End quote ---
From what I have see software tends to do a forum well or do a wiki well but not both (imo). So doing both well would require the user logging into the forum and wiki independently if they wanted to write in either. (And yes I have looked at WikiStyle SMF theme. Similarly SMF Online Manual is OK as a manual and reads as if it was written by a documentation writer with the comments mostly asking for support and being referred to the forum, not suggesting updates to the help pages. This is a perfectly reasonable approach if if one person wants control of the documentation, it is just different to a collaborative document. Interestingly they run two copies of the forum software and require a separate login for each)

rick.ca:

--- Quote ---From what I have see software tends to do a forum well or do a wiki well but not both (imo).
--- End quote ---

Your basis for trashing my proposal and most of your reasoning for supporting a separate wiki all seem to be based on this—your opinion. You still haven't presented any concrete reasoning why this should be so.

Yes, wiki software is designed for maintaining wikis, so it does offer unique features that might be useful in that regard. But do we need these features? Do we need them enough to justify sacrificing ease-of-use, accessibility and forum integration?

1) Page version control is a nice feature, but are we really going to have many users fighting over how to modify one page? I don't think so. If we have a concern about people making changes others don't approve of, we can adopt a rule that no changes other than simple edits or additions may be done without first archiving the previous version.

2) Structures are nice for complex environment, but for our needs it just makes things more difficult. In a forum board, the same can be done directly via a topic number.

3) Our only apparent need for multilingual support is the existence of English and Russian user groups. I'm quite sure each group would be just as happy maintaining their own help documentation, and not have to worry about whether it's a mirror image of the other group's documentation. If we want to, we can read each other's documentation using Google Translate, and copy any content we want.


--- Quote ---However it will end up being done by the moderators and in multiple languages. Not a problem for an organisation with a document writer. Also not a problem if nostra, rick and reset are comfortable writing and maintaining it. Or perhaps you are happy with the current level of documentation, noob users support, in which case moving in to the forum environment is probably not to onerous.
--- End quote ---

I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. It sounds like a description of the problems we're having now relying on an external wiki. But from you said immediately before, I suppose it's repetition of the spurious arguments you've made in previous posts. And to which I've repeatedly explained...

Maintaining documentation in the forum would make it much more accessible to all—not just those needing the help, but anyone inclined to help maintain the documentation. My personal interest in what I proposed is I don't have time to do it, so I would like to see a mechanism that makes it easier for others to participate. I suggested anyone who asks should be given moderator privileges for the Help board. At the same time, it would make the task of helping users in the Support board much easier because posts can be easily moved and linked between the two boards. I'm sure there would be a similar synergy between feature suggestion and beta testing discussions.


--- Quote ---So doing both well would require the user logging into the forum and wiki independently if they wanted to write in either.
--- End quote ---

Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. This, obviously, it one of the significant problems with using an external wiki. It's one I would hope can be resolved by using the forum. I'm not in a position to test and verify this, but from what I can gather from SMF documentation this should be possible. A theme can be applied at the board level of a forum. So the WikiStyle theme could be applied to a Help board, and that board would take on the look and feel of a wiki.

So it would seem perfect integration may not only be feasible, but very easy to implement. A huge advantage to this integration—in addition to the ability to move and cross-reference material between the boards—is the Help board would be searched using the existing (rather good) search facility. This means that one search would return results from the help documentation as well as items from any other board included in the search. That might be so effective, we could scrap the idea of an HTML help file entirely. Instead, program help would simply run a search. This can be done now with a Web search like...

http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?action=search;advanced;search=help  8)

The more I think about it, the more it seems we've been held back by the existence of the wiki. And the unfounded assumption a wiki must always be best for help documentation.

patch:

--- Quote from: nostra on August 27, 2010, 08:48:10 pm ---Unfortunately it seems like many users have difficulties when starting using PVD.

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: rick.ca on August 30, 2010, 08:52:48 pm ---It's been a useful experiment, but the unavoidable conclusion is that no wiki is going to work very well in our circumstances.

--- End quote ---
Hits PVD Wiki Home :- English: 27432 Russian: 6802
Page Ranking English:
--PVD-Manual ie table of contants (11047) (Which was not easy to find in the old wiki)
--Launching-PVD-for-the-First-Time (4734)
Page Ranking Russian
--Руководство по PVD ie table of contents (2823)
--Запуск PVD в первый раз ie Launching-PVD-for-the-First-Time (2092)


--- Quote from: rick.ca on September 07, 2010, 04:19:26 am ---You still haven't presented any concrete reasoning why this should be so.
--- End quote ---

--- Quote ---we could scrap the idea of an HTML help file entirely. Instead, program help would simply run a search. This can be done now with a Web search like...

http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?action=search;advanced;search=help

--- End quote ---

Sorry rick I do not believe it is possible for me to explain the issues to you.

CAD:
The argument over which is better, wiki or forum is nonsensical. They perform different functions.
The forum is place to discuss PVD. The wiki is a place to store documentaion about PVD.
One is relatively dynamic, the other relatively static.

Version 2 of SMF appears to be forum software with CMS built in.
It is no different from what exists now except it is in one integrated software package.
It could just as easily be achieved with a WIKI or other form of CMS and using SMF APIs to achieve integration.

From what i can see - the wiki was created to create place where new users go to get help on how to use PVD. It was created as a way of creating a manual for PVD. This was done extremely well. The content is fantastic. The changes i have made with the wiki have been minimal and mostly around re-organising where pages live make access to them seem to be more of a manual.

Creating and maintaining documentation is always going to be difficult, no matter what system is used. It usually requires one or two people to own it.

I think documentation helps/how to etc needs to be separated from the forum otherwise they get lost amongst the discussion. New users are not going to wade through pages of discussion to get to the "how to content" and i can't see moderators moving the "good stuff" from the discussion to the top of the forum entry, so it is instantly accessible to those interested.

Here's how i think it should (and probably does) work. New users find PVD. Download and install, and then try and figure out how to use it.
They go to the wiki have a bit of a look around and then start asking questions in the forums if they can't work it out. Once they have a handle on the program they probably never go back to the wiki. Experience users come straight to the forum.

Given the power and with that , complexity, of PVD, I fear many users try PVD and drop it because it is too difficult. A decent manual (in whatever form) that is geared towards new users would go a long way to resolving this.

I can't see that the wiki is a failure given the no of hits it has received. I do see it as a failure in that it fails -"To provide assistance to new users" easily.

The wiki or any other CMS system is never going to replace the forums because they provide different functions.
The advantage of the forums is that they provide dynamic exchange of ideas. The advantage of the wiki (or other CMS) is it provides static and structured (and hopefully easy to find) content.

The way i see it, the wiki stores the content and the forums are where the content is created.


--- Quote --- Your basis for trashing my proposal
--- End quote ---
Rick - This is harsh. No one has trashed your idea. we have discussed its merits and potential pitfalls. This is what a forum is for.


--- Quote ---and most of your reasoning for supporting a separate wiki all seem to be based on this—your opinion.
--- End quote ---
It is more than opinion. I have extensive experience in operating a wiki. I researched and trialed many. The advantages of wiki style CMS, is that content can be easily restructured and reused, there are geared towards CMSs rather than forums, with the advantages highlighted above and they have a wide array of plugins to provide additional functions.

As i said before the two ideas / formats can coexist. For example - The forum method for creating and developing "how tos" and dynamic content and when they are stable copy and paste into the manual so "noobs" have easy access
 
 

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