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User talk:Bigstones/Essay:A plan for a reorganization of the wiki: Difference between revisions
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User talk:Bigstones/Essay:A plan for a reorganization of the wiki (view source)
Revision as of 15:39, 9 May 2014
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:::So we are using "contributor momentum" to evaluate popularity of ideas and to determine if we're interested in teaming up with others who have similar/overlapping ideas. Having just a huge collection of "random & unsupported" feature requests or ideas is begging for trouble, and is the main reason why the issue tracker is not intended for feature requests, i.e. to remain useful for people who are actually able to do certain work. Which is where the wiki shines: Ideas/plans gathered here by contributors (instead of end-users) obviously matter more, even if they should never be touched in months[http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1563&p=11299&hilit=#p11299], they're representing long-term direction. And obviously it also matter just how active a contributor is at any given time, ideas and plans have more weight if someone is still involved and very active, vs. others who are no longer involved or very inactive. We have some fairly active fgdata developers whose contributions are not quite in line with ideas laid out by core developers who are meanwhile pretty much inactive, obviously activity beats inactivity. --[[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]]) 07:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC) | :::So we are using "contributor momentum" to evaluate popularity of ideas and to determine if we're interested in teaming up with others who have similar/overlapping ideas. Having just a huge collection of "random & unsupported" feature requests or ideas is begging for trouble, and is the main reason why the issue tracker is not intended for feature requests, i.e. to remain useful for people who are actually able to do certain work. Which is where the wiki shines: Ideas/plans gathered here by contributors (instead of end-users) obviously matter more, even if they should never be touched in months[http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1563&p=11299&hilit=#p11299], they're representing long-term direction. And obviously it also matter just how active a contributor is at any given time, ideas and plans have more weight if someone is still involved and very active, vs. others who are no longer involved or very inactive. We have some fairly active fgdata developers whose contributions are not quite in line with ideas laid out by core developers who are meanwhile pretty much inactive, obviously activity beats inactivity. --[[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]]) 07:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC) | ||
=== Article versioning === | |||
::::I'm all over the place *to* understand concepts and connections. I do that because I still believe that there should be a better separation between stable documentation and projects documentation, for the good of normal users, not core devs! While learning scenery development it was a major annoyance stumbling in old surpassed project pages, and I kept having the feeling that I didn't know everything I should. I didn't trust much the portals, either. The forum was a great support in this and it's '''wonderful''' that nobody ever answers "use the search" (which is the standard in Italian forums). Nevertheless, no surprise people say the wiki "just sucks". It took me some time to decide to join and I was not far from staying away. | ::::I'm all over the place *to* understand concepts and connections. I do that because I still believe that there should be a better separation between stable documentation and projects documentation, for the good of normal users, not core devs! While learning scenery development it was a major annoyance stumbling in old surpassed project pages, and I kept having the feeling that I didn't know everything I should. I didn't trust much the portals, either. The forum was a great support in this and it's '''wonderful''' that nobody ever answers "use the search" (which is the standard in Italian forums). Nevertheless, no surprise people say the wiki "just sucks". It took me some time to decide to join and I was not far from staying away. | ||
::::--[[User:Bigstones|Bigstones]] ([[User talk:Bigstones|talk]]) 14:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC) | ::::--[[User:Bigstones|Bigstones]] ([[User talk:Bigstones|talk]]) 14:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC) | ||
::::: Having better separation between stable/development articles/docs would be great in my opinion, too. We've been discussing this for years actually. I am still in favor of supporting branching/forking articles, along with tagging for each version. Currently, it's too late - but it's certainly worthwhile to discuss and consider beginning with 4.0. So far, I am dealing with this by using lots of '''notes''' and adding version specific stuff to the template. But I am convinced that we should follow wikipedia here, i.e. introduce the notion of article tagging, and requiring stable articles to be reviewed before being published, see for example: | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7064&p=66581&hilit=articles+tagging#p66581 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170735&hilit=tagging#p170735 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170749&hilit=tagging#p170749 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170543&hilit=articles+tagging#p170543 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170566&hilit=articles+tagging#p170566 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170544&hilit=articles+tagging#p170544 | |||
:::::* http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18240&p=170735&hilit=wiki#p170932 | |||
::::: the main point being here that you don't need to read through dozens of postings/pages (BTW: Yes, that could also mean USE THE SEARCH!), but that discussions are generally not as useful as establishing mechanisms and infrastructure and "enforcing" things - the FG community is generally pretty clever, but we're extremely unorganized and even chaotic at times, we've had countless good discussions and proposals to fix some very long-standing FG issues (including quality of wiki docs), but usually that's the only thing that really materializes unfortunately: talking, and very clever suggestions that end up forgotten in the archives. Now, with regard to wiki tagging and stable/unstable (versioned) docs, I am fully supportive of it and willing to help get this going. And both, Gijs & Johan_G have commented on the issue too - it just needs to start somewhere. I would suggest to prepare this for 4.0, draw a line, and begin splitting things accordingly. Obviously, it would be up to other volunteers to help with older releases, but I am only interested in doing this for 3.2, or better, 4.0. Even if this is something that neither of us is going to tackle anytime soon, this would warrant having a dedicated article about the whole idea, because people keep reinventing the same solutions... --[[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]]) 15:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC) | |||
== Tools for a better "new article" interface == | == Tools for a better "new article" interface == | ||