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Following Keith, Tom etc. great footsteps, I've decided that I'll concentrate my efforts on the documentation instead of the forum -- and reorient questions towards the wiki, when possible.
There are some structural and presentation problems in the wiki... I must say that I'm completely lost when I look at the wiki page. There’s some great info, but…
I feel that a wiki is generally not a great way to hierarchically structure info, so I suggest we concentrate our efforts on a simple linear alphabetic structure. I.E : apart from a few sections like "getting started, etc.", the wiki would probably be more useful and easy to maintain (and develop) if it was structured as a dictionary-glossary. It would be less redundant, and it would be easier for contributors to see if something is already there, and link stuff to other stuff. Hierarchies etc. are best when there’s plenty of time devoted to structure only, and when someone can take care of all the fine tuning… Which is probably not the case at the moment
One glossary to unite everything.
So, how could we do that dictionary/"glossary" ? Maybe we could do approximately one page per letter, maybe, and move all the info in the already existing glossary ? And if some pages get really big, we can always split them (but that shouldn’t be necessary).
Links for each letter could be found in the left column -- only for links, easy to maintain. We could even put some of the most important terms in the left column, as it is now., but in the right letter/section. |
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Here are a few random thoughts.
Pierre said on 11-4-08 "I'm still planning on migrating both the documentation and the forums to a Drupal hosted web site. Hopefully within 1 month. Whatever content is generated here, will be moved to this new sysem". I take that to mean the new website, and probably still use wikispaces for the documentation, and use the google groups instead of this old forum.
- However, do you know for sure the wikispaces is the "& up" vehicle for documentation we'll be using? If so, let's come up with some guidelines. Otherwise, I'm of the opinion let's get stuff out there, reasonably accurate, and you and the other masters can help on the cleanup! If we do use it, perhaps we have some wiki masters out there. I'm on the job training!
- Personally, I'm throwing stuff out there as I discover it, (usually by going through my scrapbook collection, and learn it). "I recently did stuff on wikitags, since it was "bugging" me that I didn't understand it, So once I understood it, I made up something, I'm also trying to master Snagit and use my copy of Ultraedit as other goals of this. I think experimentation is good with this stuff. And maybe some of this stuff could be put in multiple formats, such as flash, and screen captures/words, etc.
- Tom and I agreed it would be a good idea to get the glossary filled with terms, at least have the placeholder there for documentation. Maybe you would like to dive in and throw stuff in, and rearrange everything per your post here....I'm okay with anything you want to try.
- If we have 3-4 people working on documentation simultaneously, it would be nice to have an idea of who was working on what, or (who was thinking of working on what!). Perhaps if we get the placeholder terms, then I'd come in and write a few comments that we had started on that, but hadn't posted anything yet.
Keith |
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Hi keith...I'll respond with more details later.
The good thing about a big "glossary/alphabetical structure" is that it's easy to add things without having to think too much about the.... structure...
BTW : I consider myself on the same level as anybody else here... I'm just giving suggestions / opinions... ;)
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The new web site is near completion. Features are:
- Each user has an individual blog space
- There are books with hierarchy structure for the documentation
- A forum module with similar grouping as current
- Documentation books can include Forum and blog posts, no need to copy/paste
- Glossary terms are automatically highlighted in text, along with synonyms
- Hovering over a glossary term can bring up a description bubble, complete with hyperlink to the relevant page(s)
- Collapsible menu shows useful links (post content, recent blog/forum posts, who's online
- Advanced search and fuzzy search
- Document revision tracking (albeid not as good as that of wikispace)
- WYSIWYG editing with more complete feature set than wikispaces (same as current)
- Books have printer-friendly versions (Jim will be happy)
I think that this will help.
You folks are extraordinary. I appreciate your efforts. Really!
Pierre (Win XP Pro SP2, Admin, Auto-updates ON, Firefox, Acer TravelMate 660 graphics). |
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Maybe there's not much point in doing much reorganising at the moment as new website coming soon?
How about keeping the "Glossary" page with definitions of all/most terms or at least a link to where it's better defined (or both)
I kind of like the idea of having everything else on alphabetical terms - after maybe a few introductory pages at the beginning -
PS like Keith, I'm adding stuff as I come across it here - or in my use of IQ, then as I add stuff I find more and more words that need to be "explained" |
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| Tom wrote
Maybe there's not much point in doing much reorganising at the moment as new website coming soon?
How about keeping the "Glossary" page with definitions of all/most terms or at least a link to where it's better defined (or both)
I kind of like the idea of having everything else on alphabetical terms - after maybe a few introductory pages at the beginning -
[then pages in Alphabetical order by Title]
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Pierre,
would it be okay if we started merging the "Community" pages with the others?
Along the lines suggested above I was thinking |
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You sure can. I've started to copy content from the wiki to the new web site. I add a link to the new page and lock it so no other change is done.
As much as possible, we'll use books, as they support nice navigation. More personal stuff (how you use this or that feature) can be put in your personal blog (or a forum post). Those can be included in books too. (Drupal is soooo nice... This site will, I hope, help very much in making IQ easier to understand)
Pierre (Win XP Pro SP2, Admin, Auto-updates ON, Firefox, Acer TravelMate 660 graphics). |
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Tom : that's exactly what I had in mind. It's much easier to see and find what's already there when there's no complex hierarchy of subjects -- just plain simple alphabetical order (with a few introductory pages, as you said). (Other structures are also very nice -- as they structure qualities in a more meaningful way -- but they’re much more difficult to manage in a community context. That type of more elaborate structure could come after, once the development has stabilized.) |
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| PPL wrote
You sure can. I've started to copy content from the wiki to the new web site. I add a link to the new page and lock it so no other change is done.
As much as possible, we'll use books, as they support nice navigation. More personal stuff (how you use this or that feature) can be put in your personal blog (or a forum post). Those can be included in books too. (Drupal is soooo nice... This site will, I hope, help very much in making IQ easier to understand)
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eh ... sorry Pierre, havent a clue what you're on about !!
I'll either wait until I see the new site - or is there an example of a site already using this structure ?
Ahh, okay - I keep forgetting that that site is actually accessible 
just had a look, looks good, like the pop-up definitions. The site in general looks great
You do have to drill down a lot at times to get to the info (in the "Book") - would it be possible to have the book table of contents showing on the left there? |
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Done! but not on the left, but on a navigation page, as the limited width would be a problem
Pierre (Win XP Pro SP2, Admin, Auto-updates ON, Firefox, Acer TravelMate 660 graphics). |
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