New organisation for the Wiki
From Mandriva Community Wiki
If you're a beginner and new to this Wiki, you should probably start by reading these pages before you continue :
Contents |
How was the Wiki until now?
Previously, the English Wiki was not structured the way it is now and rules for writing were completely different. This Wiki contained very technical information and was not suitable at all for end users and newcomers. Updating and maintaining the Wiki was also difficult. For instance, there were no templates to make articles easier to read. All these elements are changing thanks to the effort of a lot of contributors.
Until a few weeks ago, articles were organized in a sort of HTML tree which did not use the dynamic category system at all, and did not use much of the functionality the Wiki had to offer.
Here is an explanation of new Wiki elements:
New elements
New Category system
A wiki is a huge cloud of articles which can only be identified by their name (you can see it right at the top of the article, yes that is the name). In this cloud, it is difficult to find articles since you cannot browse through any page to access them (it is a cloud). You can only find them using the search engine provided by the Wiki.
This is why the big bang created Categories.
A category is a page that you can create with a short introduction on it. But it has a special feature -- it can automatically list any article that is tagged with the name of that category. In this way, it is very easy to "include" an article into one or as many categories as you like (as long as there is an apparent relationship between the category and the article of course).
You're getting it? Yes? No? Anyway, let's take a simple example. Look at a tree like you can see any outside your house.
Consider the following:
- The Home page is the trunk, the essential page that launches the reader to the essential parts of the Wiki.
- The branches are the categories and the subcategories. They are bridges that link the homepage to the several and various articles in the Wiki.
- The leaves are the articles. They are everywhere on the tree and you can find one precise leaf by following the branches all the way from the trunk (Home page).
So, got it?
The current organization of the Wiki is very close to that of the tree, just a little more subtle. If you look at the diagram of a Wiki, it would look similar.
As you can see, the construction is similar to a tree. The Homepage points to the most important and general categories, which themselves point to other categories, and eventually, to the appropriate articles.
Here is another diagram that is centered on a Category:
Here, you can see the whole organization of a category. It is a place where you can access the information you want according to the theme or subject of the category. At the end, you access a list of articles where you find the information you want.
This is how the Wiki will work now: using a Category system where articles can be accessed though categories which all have the same starting point: the homepage.
New article appearance
Until now, articles were huge packs of text using very few templates to help make reading them easy. Since the organization of the Wiki used an HTML structure, the name of the page was a sort of HTML address.
Now, this is how article code should look. This is VERY important:
As you can see, the key elements you must know are:
- you need to tag each of your articles to at least one category, and place this tag at the top of the page. For instance, the present page source begins with "[[Category:Contribute to the Wiki]]", as you can see at the page's bottom.
- if the article isn't complete or has to be improved (in a sufficient way), place a {{draft}} template to show it has to be improved. You can use [other template] in your article to make it clearer.
- You must use == Title == as first stage titles in your article, this can avoid some few issues with Google and help making the article more comfortable to read.
- Between two second range titles (== Title ==), please skip lines twice, for your article to breath a little. People hate to read huge packs of words tight together.
- Avoid writing too much. Go to the essential, use templates to underline some points, and be explicit. Don't write tons of lines. Be simple, clear, and concise.
These are the three key points that are to be applied to any new article. Old articles that are not meeting these rules should be edited to comply with the new format and style.
Keep in mind that there are forbidden elements as well:
- The {{title}} template must not be used any more. It was part of the old HTML hierarchical system that has been deprecated. If you see articles that still use it, be sure to change the name of the article if it is not appropriate (by clicking on the move tab), and then delete this template.
- Do not use "= Title =" syntax : This may cause issues with Google and indexing as well as making the article difficult to read. You should directly use "== Title ==" instead as described above.
- Do not tag an article to Category:HouseKeeping. This category is bloated, useless, and deprecated. It should no longer be used. If you see an article which is still tagged to this category, please remove this tag and place it in the right category so people can find it.
Foreword
Well, basically that's it. It's really easy.
This Wiki needs a lot of contributors, including you, to make it more accessible, organized, and written in the most useful way possible as described in this article.
You can seek articles that are considered 'old', meaning that they follow the old rules. You should edit them, perhaps rewrite parts of them, to make them fit the new system and rules.
Eerrm, and what about help?
Ah, good point. Help...
You are not alone reading this page, basically you will not be working on this Wiki alone. There are some people who already work on it making it more useful and more compliant with the rules. These people are able to help you, give you advice, or re-read an article you've just edited or created, and improve it (not because it's bad, because it's a free documentation where everybody is free to write what he knows, and I know YOU know a lot).
You can find help in the Documentation forums but also in the IRC channels provided by Mandriva. Start an IRC program (such as XChat or for KDE users Quassel IRC) and connect to #mandriva or #web-discuss to talk about Wiki. People who also have some time and who want to help about wiki can also hang out in these channels.
You might also be interested in visiting Category:Contribute to the Wiki.
But if you need help, do not hesitate to post in these forums or to write something by clicking on the Discussion tab of a Wiki page. But don't think that it's that difficult, it is actually quite easy. You even know now how Wikipedia works and how to edit Wikipedia: this Wiki is almost the same!
Thank you for your attention and good luck, happy editing! ;-)
21:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
