Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 3/20/07, Sandy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
After reading the forum / mailing list to March 20:
[...]
4. List of recipes someone maintains. I often look at the maintainer
when deciding which of two recipes to try. Is there a way for
maintainers to know which recipes they are listed on (as opposed to
those they've signed a comment on?)
May I suggest to have something like below in its own Profiles/... page:
(:comment [===
!!!fmt=#RC
RecentChange emulation
[@
[[#RC]]
* [[{=$FullName}]] . . . {=$LastModified} $[by]
[[{=$LastModifiedBy}]]: {=$LastModifiedSummary}
[[#RCend]]
@]
===]:)
(:pagelist fmt={$FullName}#RC group=Cookbook
$:Maintainer=*your_name_here* order=-time:)
Regards,
Dom
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Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 05:37:49PM -0400, Sandy wrote: 2. Possible troublesome scenario: Repeat questions. When someone asks a question, she'll bookmark her brand-new page, come back in a few days, maybe a week or two, and expect to see the page she started, complete with answer (which may be see here) So the page has to hang around for at least a month or two. We could also simply change the page to (:redirect :) to the page that has the answer. But after that, it should go. We can search for pages containing (:redirect ...:). :-) 4. List of recipes someone maintains. I often look at the maintainer when deciding which of two recipes to try. Is there a way for maintainers to know which recipes they are listed on (as opposed to those they've signed a comment on?) It can probably be done with the $:Maintainer filter. For example, to find recipes I maintain I could probably use $:Maintainer=*Pm*, $:Maintainer=[[~Pm]], $:Maintainer=Pm,[[~Pm]], or something like that. Thanks! Pm ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
After reading the forum / mailing list to March 20: Pm's idea looks good. It will only be as good as it is maintained, but that's not news. And the nicer it is, the more likely it will be maintained. (I see he's already put it into action.) I agree that wiki is better for solutions, and mailinglist or forum is best for the discussion. Other ideas that came up as I read, summarized in one post. 1. Add a check-box list of *all* the cookbook categories to the cookbook edit page. A list of categories works better than remembering them because: It prevents proliferation / mis-spelling / synonyms. It encourages you to consider several options, and a check-box list lets you choose several. I say edit rather than starting template because sometimes as the discussion continues we realize it should be in several categories. Then again, now we have a nice list down the side to remind us. 2. Possible troublesome scenario: Repeat questions. When someone asks a question, she'll bookmark her brand-new page, come back in a few days, maybe a week or two, and expect to see the page she started, complete with answer (which may be see here) So the page has to hang around for at least a month or two. But after that, it should go. Maybe a category repeat asked in March2007. However, before deleting it, we have to consider why the asker couldn't find it in the first place. Add the keywords (and phrases) she used to the main answer, or even the entire question. 3. Idea for thought: Status as in alpha / beta / testing / broken. Sometimes clear from the comments, sometimes not. 4. List of recipes someone maintains. I often look at the maintainer when deciding which of two recipes to try. Is there a way for maintainers to know which recipes they are listed on (as opposed to those they've signed a comment on?) Cheers! Sandy Patrick R. Michaud wrote: 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. [...] Strong words there! I dare you to justify this bald assertion. You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you haven't proven in any way that a forum is good. Indeed, Dan has made some strong assertions here (many of which I also find unsupported). However, I must also say that I briefly visited the sample forum Dan put together at http://www.fast.st/pmwiki/index.php, and based on Dan's work there I think I finally see an answer to the whole problem...which I'll describe below. First I need to acknowledge a quick Thank you! to Dan for the time he put into the beta PmWiki forum. Although I don't think I'll use the ZAPforum approach that he's prototyped, seeing it in action did finally cause me to see a path through this mess. So Dan gets a lot of credit for pushing hard enough to get us to a solution on this. In all cases, the difficulty is in taxonomy and grouping pages/threads in a way that makes the right page/thread easy to find. Kathryn has it exactly right here. When I first visited Dan's PmWiki forum site, the first thing I noticed was that the front page didn't have any immediate clues about how to navigate to find questions or answers to questions. Then I noticed the topics list in the in the sidebar, with things like Administration, Beginners, Bugs, Developers, etc. My thought was... Oh, okay. That could work. Clicking one of the topics goes to a topic page that then displays the questions that have been asked with that topic. Okay, that works nicely for navigation, too. So, as Kathryn says, the key to solving this problem (and the difficult part) is to have a reasonable set of topics with which to organize the questions, answers and commentary. Dan's topic list is a reasonable start. But there's more... My next (fallacious) thought in playing with Dan's site was something along the lines of Too bad we can't easily put a topic list like this in the sidebar on pmwiki.org... the sidebar on pmwiki.org really needs to keep a structure like it has now. I then played with the forum some more, found a few more things I liked and disliked about it, and figured I'd just file the experience away for a while until an answer presented itself. But a few minutes later the answers came like lightning: 1. Oops! We **can** have a sidebar on pmwiki.org with topics like those on Dan's forum site! Just because the main sidebar on pmwiki.org needs a certain structure doesn't mean the Cookbook needs to have that same structure also. The Cookbook group can (and should) have its own specialized sidebar, with topics organizing the recipes. The recipes then handle the load of presenting questions and answers. 2. ...and the Cookbook needs organization anyway, and a topic list in the sidebar is a really good organizating framework for doing that. Each topic goes to a topic page that displays the recipes associated with that topic. 3.
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
You can read the forum via news protocol : news.gmane.org subscribe to gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user So you can have a thread view, and use the search facilities of the news reader Stephane -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of the Other michael Sent: lundi 19 mars 2007 15:07 To: pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com Subject:Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum... +-mailing list archives -- searching is a bear. I'm starting to use google to hit up the archives, becuase -- as far as I can tell -- there is no clustering of words into phrases. eg, category list does not enforce proximity with tine GMANE search. ah, well... -forums +refactoring http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WikiRefactoring and http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/WikiRefactoring Intermediate solution: read pmwiki in a gmail account; send all pmwiki-posts to a special folder (label, in gmail-speak). presto! you've got forum-threads! well, threads. It's still not sub-categorized. now, if you had an entire gmail account devoted to your wiki mail, you could create more category labels. And since a given message may have multiple labels -- -the Other michael http://www.xradiograph.com/interference http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users sa Banksys nv - Chaussee de Haecht 1442 Haachtsesteenweg - 1130 Brussels - Belgium RPM-RPR Bruxelles-Brussel - TVA-BTW BE 0418.547.872 Bankrekening-Compte Bancaire-Bank Account 310-0269424-44 BIC BBRUBEBB - IBAN BE55 3100 2694 2444 The information contained in this e-mail and any attachment thereto is confidential and may contain information which is protected by intellectual property rights. This information is intended for the exclusive use of the recipient(s) named above. This e-mail does not constitute any binding relationship or offer toward any of the addressees. If you are not one of the addressees , one of their employees or a proxy holder entitled to hand over this message to the addressee(s), any use of the information contained herein (e.g. reproduction, divulgation, communication or distribution,...) is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and destroy it immediately after. The integrity and security of this message cannot be guaranteed and it may be subject to data corruption, interception and unauthorized amendment, for which we accept no liability. ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 3/19/07, SMETS Stephane BKS-IT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can read the forum via news protocol : news.gmane.org subscribe to gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user So you can have a thread view, and use the search facilities of the news reader Stephane Sorry about being kind of ignorant of news readers. But can someone suggest a good newsreader, and how exactly to get it set up. I think that's probably why some are satisfied with the mailing list. Otherwise, the archives are near to worthless. Currently I use Gmail to store all my pmwiki mail and use its search features with threads, but I would like a better way to organize topics and save favorite emails. Hadn't thought about labels. Maybe a real email client Cheers, Dan ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
There are many possibilities Under windows : outlook express, Mesnews, Newsrover, Agent Under linux : agent, and probably many others Usenet is a very old protocol -:( Stéphane -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of The Editor Sent: lundi 19 mars 2007 15:43 To: SMETS Stephane BKS-IT Cc: the Other michael; pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com Subject:Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum... On 3/19/07, SMETS Stephane BKS-IT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can read the forum via news protocol : news.gmane.org subscribe to gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user So you can have a thread view, and use the search facilities of the news reader Stephane Sorry about being kind of ignorant of news readers. But can someone suggest a good newsreader, and how exactly to get it set up. I think that's probably why some are satisfied with the mailing list. Otherwise, the archives are near to worthless. Currently I use Gmail to store all my pmwiki mail and use its search features with threads, but I would like a better way to organize topics and save favorite emails. Hadn't thought about labels. Maybe a real email client Cheers, Dan sa Banksys nv - Chaussee de Haecht 1442 Haachtsesteenweg - 1130 Brussels - Belgium RPM-RPR Bruxelles-Brussel - TVA-BTW BE 0418.547.872 Bankrekening-Compte Bancaire-Bank Account 310-0269424-44 BIC BBRUBEBB - IBAN BE55 3100 2694 2444 The information contained in this e-mail and any attachment thereto is confidential and may contain information which is protected by intellectual property rights. This information is intended for the exclusive use of the recipient(s) named above. This e-mail does not constitute any binding relationship or offer toward any of the addressees. If you are not one of the addressees , one of their employees or a proxy holder entitled to hand over this message to the addressee(s), any use of the information contained herein (e.g. reproduction, divulgation, communication or distribution,...) is prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and destroy it immediately after. The integrity and security of this message cannot be guaranteed and it may be subject to data corruption, interception and unauthorized amendment, for which we accept no liability. ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 2007-03-19 The Editor is rumoured to have said: Sorry about being kind of ignorant of news readers. But can someone suggest a good newsreader, and how exactly to get it set up. I think that's probably why some are satisfied with the mailing list. Otherwise, the archives are near to worthless. Currently I use Gmail to store all my pmwiki mail and use its search features with threads, but I would like a better way to organize topics and save favorite emails. Hadn't thought about labels. Maybe a real email client I can recommend Thuderbird. I switched to it from Eudora with some trepidation, but after one day, I never looked back. T-Bird flawlessly imported my 35,000 stored emails. I use it as both an IMAP and POP3 client (simultaneously). T-Bird is both a mail *and* news reader (and maybe RSS too, but I don't use it). Just click on the Create a new account button, and it will walk you through the setup. -- Neil Herber Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 3/19/07, Oliver Betz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Currently I use Gmail to store all my pmwiki mail and use its search features with threads, So you depend on Gmail. You have no backup under your control. Well, an email client can be configured to download gmail with or without deleting it from the server. So you can back it up. With a forum, no download, no backup. And one more piece of software that somebody has to maintain And since the mailing list is archived online, I don't really see the need to replicate it on my home machine. Especially given the volume. -- -the Other michael http://www.xradiograph.com/interference http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings http://www.xradiograph.com/amazingtext http://scp.xradiograph.com DISCLAIMER: links contained in mail from this address may or may not be contextually related to any encapsulating text. STATEMENT OF CONFIDENTIALITY: I send a bcc of every email only to the NSA, because I want America to Be Secure. ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
Reply to The Editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07-03-18 00:05: 1) Despite the fact it is true all of us actively using the PmWiki mail list like mail lists (or we wouldn't be here) the 700 people a day visiting the PmWiki site are clearly not all on this list. We have what, maybe 40-50 active developers sitting around and answering each other's emails. What about the hundreds, or thousands that don't have time to plough though scores of PmWiki emails every day to keep up with things (probably the vast majority of users)... And the solution would be to sit and scroll through hundreds of forums posts? Sorry, I've seen this attempt to handle these things before and it doesn't work. Mailing lists aren't perfect either but they are better. But the best thing in my opinion is edited FAQs/tutorials etc ... unfortunately they come with a price, some people has to do the editing and it takes time and effort. Letting anyone edit the pages? Of course ... but my experience is that the quality/structure of the pages deteriorates over time (on the other hand, having a group of editors have the risk of them losing interest in doing the edits) jem ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
All posts to this mailing list you can find at http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user which is searchable. I have found post from 8 month ago concerned to my search criteria very easy and was happy with that. It's a matter of 1 additional line when responding some question and giving the solution or a responsible answer. Just add the line keywords:FAQanswered or FAQA or something like that in your answer. Thus the search criteria can be more effective. Regards, Jiri Jan Erik Moström napsal(a): ... And the solution would be to sit and scroll through hundreds of forums posts? Sorry, I've seen this attempt to handle these things before and it doesn't work. Mailing lists aren't perfect either but they are better. But the best thing in my opinion is edited FAQs/tutorials etc ... unfortunately they come with a price, some people has to do the editing and it takes time and effort. ... ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
The Editor wrote: Other than Pm's fair attempt at an answer, and his welcome suggestions for improving the cookbook, most of the responses to my post were pretty inane. No offensce, but really... I would not have taken any offense and probably not have responded to this (since others have made my points for me) except that you named me in your response. I have trimmed the original post to save space. We have what, maybe 40-50 active developers sitting around and answering each other's emails. This is clearly not true. If all the questions are being asked by active developers, why do we get repeated requests for the most basic items? The developers seem to generate the most mail, but the newby questions don't come from them. 2) The PmWiki FAQ/Question page is atrocious. I think we'd be better off deleting it than have it on the PmWiki page. I'm sorry, but that is about the worst example of poorly organized information I've ever seen. I made more or less the same comment in August 2005. Hagan Fox, Patrick, myself and many others then spent considerable time refactoring the page, coming up with new markups and so on. It appears that things have gone back to the former state. 3) The lousy quality of the FAQ page is no proof the mailing list works. It's just proof we have a lousy FAQ system. The mailing list does work regardless of the state of the FAQ. We don't have a lousy FAQ system - we just have a FAQ that has not been maintained. It takes time and effort that just doesn't appear to be forthcoming. 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. I said: I find that forums are great for conversations but lousy for conclusions. The best tool I have found for collaborative technical documentation is a wiki. If you read my post, I suggested we do one in PmWiki. Doing a forum in PmWiki does not make turn the forum into a wiki. 6) For those who don't want to check the forum, it could easily be set so all posts are forwarded to the Mailing List for the rest of us email junkies. The Gmane archive is simply the inverse of this idea. Ok, if you don't like the word Forum, think of it as a classification system for FAQ's. Good idea. Don't call it what it is not. Very good idea. As Neil did with his silly little AQ post (more clutter to the PmWiki site), I decided to put my suggestion into practice also. Thanks for following my example. Despite the content, my page and my intent are absolutely serious. The current FAQ does not get maintained because no one has the time to do it. I was suggesting the AQ page for several reasons: a) to encourage people to post the answers they got via email b) so that people doing a PmWiki search *might* have a chance of finding the answer c) as a staging ground to the FAQ -- Neil Herber Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 3/18/07, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. [...] Strong words there! I dare you to justify this bald assertion. You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you haven't proven in any way that a forum is good. Indeed, Dan has made some strong assertions here (many of which I also find unsupported). Apologies again for not stating myself as clearly as I intended. I only meant a Forum set up on a wiki could be designed to still have all the advantages of a Wiki. I'm all for wiki's! And as Pm's solutions shows, the best approach is indeed something that combines the advantages of something more forum-like (structuring information) with the advantages of a wiki (open editing). I think Pm's plan is great--much better than my original quick suggestion, for it does just that. Plus, it builds on what we already have in the Cookbook, so it comes already populated with information. Brilliant! First I need to acknowledge a quick Thank you! to Dan for the time he put into the beta PmWiki forum. Although I don't think I'll use the ZAPforum approach that he's prototyped, seeing it in action did finally cause me to see a path through this mess. So Dan gets a lot of credit for pushing hard enough to get us to a solution on this. No problem with not using it. Your solution is much better. And I will be using something very much like it on my site here shortly, so none of the effort was wasted. Dan's topic list is a reasonable start. But there's more... I'd suggest you also add a topic/pagelist for 1) recently released recipes (new recipe pages) and 2) recent upgrades (somehow linked to when a script is uploaded), 3) a favorites topic (if we can settle on some kind of voting system (or perhaps based on # of downloads?). Others may be able to think of others. Also, since I seem to recall categories can be nested, we could perhaps have subcategories if desired. And lastly, Skins could be inserted as a category just to make the cookbook a bit more comprehensive. Just some thoughts. But a few minutes later the answers came like lightning: 1. Oops! We **can** have a sidebar on pmwiki.org with topics like those on Dan's forum site! Just because the main sidebar on pmwiki.org needs a certain structure doesn't mean the Cookbook needs to have that same structure also. The Cookbook group can (and should) have its own specialized sidebar, with topics organizing the recipes. The recipes then handle the load of presenting questions and answers. Yes, this shares the load of maintaining things on recipe writers. And to drop a non functional recipe, just remove the category tag... 6. Since many of the recipe pages already have a Questions answered by this recipe section, a little bit of structure added to those sections would make it possible to use a pagelist to show the questions answered by the recipes within each topic. This makes it look more like a FAQ type of document. How would you deal with multiple questons on a recipe page? Maybe an #begin#end include? Some recipes answer several questions... 7. We then return to my earlier idea to have a form that makes it easy for people to post questions as new pages in the cookbook. The form would appear on the various topic pages, and would automatically create a new page containing the question, as well as the associated topic tag and an [[!AnswerMe]] tag that indicates the question needs an answer. The [[!AnswerMe]] tag makes it easy to locate any questions that haven't ben resolved (for those of us who like to do such things). Also, questions could be automatically posted to the PmWiki mailing list so folks can be alerted to the new questions, discuss the question, and when there's a final solution, it can be posted to the cookbook page. This solves a *lot* of problems at once... - The Cookbook becomes the single repository for any information and tips that don't quite fit into the core documentation. It returns cookbook to it's original purpose of being the place to provide a variety of answers about PmWiki configuration, and not just a place for recipes. Yes great idea! That's what makes this solution so brilliant! Plus I don't have to worry about trying to maintain another site! :) - It gives us a way to quickly organize and reorganize questions and topics as needed into more appropriate structures. - Unanswered questions are easy to locate, and they quickly become answer recipes that document how to solve a given problem for whoever comes by later with a similar question. - Background discussion and commentary for each answer recipe can be easily stored in an associated '-Talk' page for the recipe. I like it. I like it a lot. Based on this I will probably start re-organizing the Cookbook and the
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 11:45:50AM -0400, The Editor wrote: On 3/18/07, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 6. Since many of the recipe pages already have a Questions answered by this recipe section, a little bit of structure added to those sections would make it possible to use a pagelist to show the questions answered by the recipes within each topic. How would you deal with multiple questons on a recipe page? Maybe an #begin#end include? Some recipes answer several questions... I was thinking along the lines of a #begin#end include, yes. That's what the existing FAQ does. 7. We then return to my earlier idea to have a form that makes it easy for people to post questions as new pages in the cookbook. Also, questions could be automatically posted to the PmWiki mailing list so folks can be alerted to the new questions, discuss the question, and when there's a final solution, it can be posted to the cookbook page. I'd prefer to not have posts automatically go to the mailing list. We have enough traffic here as it is. It also becomes a huge conduit for potential email spam, since the posts would be coming from the wiki account and not the person posting the question. Can't wait Pm. I think it will be a huge improvement. I'd also suggest we drop the FAQ link or have it point to the cookbook home page (topic list)... Granted that the PmWiki.Questions page is dysfunctional, I still haven't understood what it is that you think is so awful about the PmWiki.FAQ pages. I think it's worth keeping around, if only because it allows common questions to be placed directly into documentation pages. But more to the point, I've noticed thatn whenever I add a new question+answer to the PmWiki.FAQ, that question just doesn't seem to get asked anymore, either on the mailing list or in other sources. To me, that indicates that the PmWiki.FAQ is very effective, because people are finding the answers they are looking for. Pm ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
Reply to The Editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07-03-16 16:50: I think at least for questions like these there should be a searchable forum for people to ask questions and get answers. Forums are bad for this, it's way better to discuss/ask question on a mailing list and summarize the answers to some kind of wiki ... perhaps we could use some wiki software to do this, does anyone know of one that would work? ;-) jem ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Jan Erik Moström wrote: I think at least for questions like these there should be a searchable forum for people to ask questions and get answers. Forums are bad for this, it's way better to discuss/ask question on a mailing list and summarize the answers to some kind of wiki ... perhaps we could use some wiki software to do this, does anyone know of one that would work? Funny you should mention this. I just finished summarizing a thread on a wiki page. I used this wiki called PmWiki, have you heard about it? :-) On the more serious side, I've found it useful to add a link to the thread in question as a reference. This means that someone reading the summary, can also go to the thread and check if additional posts have been added since the summary was last modified. Oh, I should also mention that it's very convenient to use intermap prefixes. At wiki.lyx.org, I basically just use LyXThreadDevel:70420 to refer to post number 70420 (yes, there are quite a few posts on that list..., although this one isnt' that far behind. Jan's post was number 4 something according to the way gmane count things) /Christian -- Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
Other than Pm's fair attempt at an answer, and his welcome suggestions for improving the cookbook, most of the responses to my post were pretty inane. No offensce, but really... 1) Despite the fact it is true all of us actively using the PmWiki mail list like mail lists (or we wouldn't be here) the 700 people a day visiting the PmWiki site are clearly not all on this list. We have what, maybe 40-50 active developers sitting around and answering each other's emails. What about the hundreds, or thousands that don't have time to plough though scores of PmWiki emails every day to keep up with things (probably the vast majority of users)... 2) The PmWiki FAQ/Question page is atrocious. I think we'd be better off deleting it than have it on the PmWiki page. I'm sorry, but that is about the worst example of poorly organized information I've ever seen. 3) The lousy quality of the FAQ page is no proof the mailing list works. It's just proof we have a lousy FAQ system. The fact we frequently get asked the same questions on the mailing list is probably better proof the mailing list doesn't work. I mean, yes, people get answers fast--but they are not searching the archives. I've tried the archives many times. They don't work for me. It's hard to find stuff. PmWiki can and should do better. Much better. 4) While the cookbook helps some it is itself getting a bit unweildy. Pm has been slowly making some good changes in this area, but I have thought for a long time we need to start categorizing the information there. Perhaps a section for recipe scripts, a section for config questions, one for markup issues. Rankings, culling out stuff not maintained, whatever. Information is only as good as its taxonomy. Well, I don't know. Sounded good. But effective classification helps alot. The cookbook (IMO) is far over extended, and would be much better if it stuck to specific kinds of solutions, etc. 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. If you read my post, I suggested we do one in PmWiki. We can keep it as editable as we want, so if info needs to be changed, you just change it. Delete a thread. Add a comment. Whatever you want. With all the bright thinkers on this list we should be able to come up with something! 6) For those who don't want to check the forum, it could easily be set so all posts are forwarded to the Mailing List for the rest of us email junkies. If they have an email address we could just cc them the answer. No guarantee the information would get in the Forum, but if Pm ever gets the email to wiki converter going, we could work on making that happen too. And a good forum might build it's own community of question answerers. Especially if people can find stuff there easily. 7) When I used Drupal, they had an excellent forum area and I used it any time I had a question. Their mailing list was way to busy for me. And getting answers out of their forum was quick and helpful. Beat the socks off the search system for the PmWiki maillist. I may be wrong, but I think a well organized forum would be a boon to the PmWiki documentation system. Ok, if you don't like the word Forum, think of it as a classification system for FAQ's. It's all about organizing information. I know wiki's are kind of freeform, but we're not such anarchists we can't stand for a little organization somewhere? (No offence Pm, you've do a great job--I'm only talking about others in the community who knock off ideas like actually trying to organize our FAQ page). As Neil did with his silly little AQ post (more clutter to the PmWiki site), I decided to put my suggestion into practice also. It took about 5 hours instead of 5 minutes, but I set up a beta version of a PmWiki forum. I'd be willing to change it to a PmWiki FAQ system or whatever if that relieves some of you. If no one finds such an idea useful, I'll drop it. It was pretty cool setting it up... You can see it at http://www.fast.st/pmwiki/index.php Still pristine, but pretty much fully functional. Feel free to test it out. I'm still very much interested in exploring this, despite the negative feedback so far. We've had enough people on the list complain of email overload, I know there's a need for something like this. If any are interested in helping to support this, I'll share webmaster privileges, and I'm very open to suggestions for improving this. (It already has unlimited topics, questions, editable comments, and I even threw in instant messaging between members just for the fun of it. No email yet, but could very easily add in ZAP's newsletter system for managing small mail lists around specific topics. Or have a button to automatically add/remove lines on the Site.Notify page. Also, as it uses Hg, it would be a cinch to set up subtopics, like Recipes:ZAP or Skins:Evolver, or whatever. Feedback? Cheers, Dan PS. If Pm isn't interested in supporting something like this, I might be willing to with some help.
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. If you read my post, I suggested we do one in PmWiki. We can keep it as editable as we want, so if info needs to be changed, you just change it. Delete a thread. Add a comment. Whatever you want. With all the bright thinkers on this list we should be able to come up with something! Strong words there! I dare you to justify this bald assertion. You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you haven't proven in any way that a forum is good. Oops. I think you misread what I meant by this. I was only saying, the forum would itself still be a wiki. (PmWiki of course). So you don't lose any benefits of a wiki by making it organized a little more. I'm all for wikis! The advantage I see to a forum (FAQ system) is that it can be somewhat structured--to help control the flow of information, and to make things more readily retrievable. At least better than the current FAQ page. Cheers, Dan ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
The Editor wrote: 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense. If you read my post, I suggested we do one in PmWiki. We can keep it as editable as we want, so if info needs to be changed, you just change it. Delete a thread. Add a comment. Whatever you want. With all the bright thinkers on this list we should be able to come up with something! Strong words there! I dare you to justify this bald assertion. You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you haven't proven in any way that a forum is good. Oops. I think you misread what I meant by this. I was only saying, the forum would itself still be a wiki. (PmWiki of course). So you don't lose any benefits of a wiki by making it organized a little more. I'm all for wikis! The advantage I see to a forum (FAQ system) is that it can be somewhat structured--to help control the flow of information, and to make things more readily retrievable. At least better than the current FAQ page. Well... I know I'm not pro forum... mail list works well enough... with that said... IF... there is a PmWiki forum someday, I'd leave it integrated with the maillist or switch over to a nntp server with integrated web based forum. I don't want to HAVE to use a browser for forum posting. ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 04:50:10PM -0400, The Editor wrote: I'm looking at the PmWiki site, at pages like http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Questions and http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/FAQ and I have to say this is a terrible way to do things. Almost an embarassment, considering how superb the software is. I think at least for questions like these there should be a searchable forum for people to ask questions and get answers. Most recent questions posted at the top. Each question on its own page, with comments. It would take 5 minutes to do it in ZAP or FOX. Is there some reason we don't have something like that? ...because I've never been convinced that it will be a significant improvement over what we have now. Unless you're advocating that we eliminate the mailing list, I think a forum would just add yet another place to have to keep up to date (and where things would go out of date). Personally, I'd be in favor of removing the PmWiki/Questions page, simply because it's not a place that is checked often for answering questions. Which really gets back to your original question (why don't we use a forum) -- like the PmWiki.Questions page, forums don't work for me because they require that I constantly check the site for new questions. Electronic mail works much better because it gives me a convenient way to respond. I fear a forum will end up being much the same as PmWiki.Questions -- questions will get posted, but not enough people will be actively monitoring them for them to get answered. And personally, I've never found a forum that actually made it significantly easier to find answers to my questions than mailing list archives do. Pm ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
Re: [pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...
On 2007-03-16 Patrick R. Michaud is rumoured to have said: And personally, I've never found a forum that actually made it significantly easier to find answers to my questions than mailing list archives do. Ditto. I find that forums are great for conversations but lousy for conclusions. The best tool I have found for collaborative technical documentation is a wiki. The existing FAQ and Questions pages may be less than they could be, but I think that just shows how effective this mailing list is. People ask a question, get an answer, go away happy. Very few think to add their problem and solution to the FAQ, probably because they have no way to guage how frequently the question has been asked. And maybe because once your problem is solved, you have less motivation to talk about it. Instead of or in addition to the FAQ, there should be an AQ (answered questions) page or group. You are only allowed to post questions with answers, such as: Q: Why don't we use a forum instead of this stupid AQ page. A: Because forums are great for holding conversations, but lousy for reaching conclusions. At least here someone can edit my inane comment, sparing future readers the agony of reading it. In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I have started this page: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/AQ -- Neil Herber Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ ___ pmwiki-users mailing list pmwiki-users@pmichaud.com http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
