Wiki Structure

[InTheWoods]

The Vector Wiki structure is fine now but if it starts to grow it is going to need some structure for easy navigation. We've all seen good Wiki's and bad Wiki's. And we want this to be a useful Wiki.

Xeon has said "I do nothing without agreement from the other users"
So I thought it was time to agree on some basic structure so all of those HOW TO's waiting to be written can be properly interlinked. .......ONCE!!!

(by the way this is my first attempt at a poll and I could not figure out how to put it in the Wiki thread)

[saulgoode]

Intermediate is unnecessary and will just cause grief when trying to categorize a page. Pages should be either 'beginner' or 'user'. Anyone who has advanced past the stage of beginner (or is endeavoring to do so) should be at least knowledgeable enough to decide for herself whether a presentation is at a level she can comprehend.

Links should be provided on beginner pages to "escalate" to more advanced presentations of information.

In addition, there should be a 'developer' category.

[Xeon]

Thanks for the poll, I'll definately keep an eye on it. After a while i will combine all ideas in a form of a structure, and present it

Can I ask: what do you mean with mirroring the forum? I just see a bunch of how to's in the forum without some structure. Basically all i have been doing is putting them safely over (mirroring).

I like the idea of having a beginner and user part, as saulgoode introduced

Xeon

[Toe]

I think for the 'top' of the hierarchy a subset of the forum might be a good idea, namely FAQs/Common Troubleshooting, Docs, and How-Tos.  If an article is targeted more at 'advanced' users, I think just tagging it as such in some way would be the better way to go.

[rbistolfi]

All the suggestions here are really good. I just want to add this: the gentoo wiki is great and we should take it as a model for contents and organization. I think the main page is a little hard to navigate though. The hardware section is great.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page

[exeterdad]

I'm choosing not to vote.  Only because I have very little knowledge of wiki's.

I just know they are valuable and contain what I want 

But I have trouble navigating wiki's for some reason.

Drive on VL wiki masters!

[InTheWoods]

Xeon

what do you mean with mirroring the forum?

I meant that each "HOW TO" goes in a sub category named after each forum category.

The following are examples  of fictional pages in sub categories under the "HOW TO" category

Code:

[[howtos:Installation_Updates:Install Vector]]
[[howtos:Kernel:Kernel compilation]]
[[howtos:Hardware & Drivers:ATI vs Nvida]]
[[howtos:Networking_Security:Set up wireless networking]]
[[howtos:Software General:Install software from Source Code]]
[[howtos:Web & Internet:Browser Comparisons]]
[[howtos:Office & Printing:Lexmark Printer Driver Installation]]
[[howtos:Multimedia_Games:Counter Strike on Vector]]
[[howtos:Portable VL:Vector on your USB stick]]
[[howtos:X-Rated:Alternate methods of configuring X]]
[[howtos:Technical General:How to auto start a daemon before login]]

In the first example the article "Install Vector is in the "HOW TO" category and in the sub category "Installation".

"Docs", "F.A.Q.s", and some other categories could belong to a higher category ex.

Code:

[[news:Style guidelines released]]

saulgoode

Pages should be either 'beginner' or 'user'

I like that idea. Now how do we distinguish them apart. Perhaps some kind of logo.
Before this project began I was toying with the idea of setting up a wiki this winter for beginers (me). I had the name 'NEWBSAUCE' in mind and imagined a baby penguin in a diaper being spoon fed. My motto was going to be "Strap on your bib,". Perhaps some of the artists can come up with something like this.
Or we could just go with a different page colour.

rbistolfi

the gentoo wiki is great and we should take it as a model for contents and organization

It is and we should take note of both it's strengths and weaknesses.

[GrannyGeek]

Scribus has a good wiki, too:
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Main_Page

I can actually find things.
--GrannyGeek

[InTheWoods]

Puppy Linux has a well organized wiki also. Worth learning from.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage

[Xeon]

If any of you has some more suggestions, please drop them soon, I hope to make the structure and make the wiki work soon.

[kidd]

Could we use tags for classifying pages?

Easuter wireless how-to could be Beginner,networking

larkl script on http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4278.msg28008#msg28008 could be tagged as intermediate,script,and networking

We should stablish a finite number of tags, otherwise number of tags with only one article will grow in exponential way.

Forum has a tree form, but I think the great point of wikis is the interrelations between articles and words.

If this post was on the wiki, it should be tagged as wikiStructure,beginner, random_thoughts 

[InTheWoods]

Could we use tags for classifying pages?

I am not sure but I think the namespaces feature of DokuWiki is the same thing.
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:namespaces

We should stablish a finite number of tags, otherwise number of tags with only one article will grow in exponential way

Exactly my point.

Xeon you might want to check out the templates available at
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki%3Atpl%3Atemplates

I see some of them offer specific side panels for specific namespaces. Depending on the namespace structure you choose perhaps side panel decoration (colour or images) could aid in navigation. But if begginer articles appear in each category then it may be easier to just mark individual pages with an image or tag like your html author insert.

There are lots of choices and some may have features that affect how you want to organize things. For the most part however style is an important but separate issue.
I kind of like the dark blue one here.
http://battlehorse.homelinux.net/dokutpl/doku_btl_blue.png

[Toe]

The difference with DokuWiki's namespaces is that an article can exist in only one namespace.  In fact, that's pretty much the whole point of namespaces. With a regular 'tagging' system, on the other hand, an article can have all the tags you want.

[InTheWoods]

So namespaces are structure which is what I was after. But tags are like the keywords that robots use to index web pages?

I like it. I presume that helps when one uses the search function. Or am I totally missing the point?

[Xeon]

well, afaik dokuwiki doesn't come in with built in keywords.

@ inthewoods, afaik most search engines look for keywords inside <meta> tags.