[wp-docs] The 1.2 conundrum

[Matthew Thomas]

On 23 Feb, 2005, at 1:07 PM, Kaf Oseo wrote:
> ...
> Do we want or need such references to 1.2 in cases like this? We still
> have the old wiki for 1.2 users

Are you going to create a new wiki (containing much redundant 
information) for each version of WordPress? Or are you going to 
thoroughly purge the site of all help for old versions every time a new 
version is released?

If the answer to both those questions is "no", then eventually you will 
have to start including version-specific sections in some pages, and an 
"Applies to:" list of version numbers at the start of most others. If 
you don't, then in a few years, someone reading a page written in the 
WordPress 1.6 era will have no way of telling whether its instructions 
are still valid for Wordpress 3.0, or whether it's just that no-one has 
had time to update/delete it.

So I suggest adding version-specific sections to pages, if you feel 
like writing such sections (even if the WordPress 1.2 section says only 
"The easiest way to solve this problem is to upgrade to WordPress 
1.5"), or if the old information is written already.

If you don't feel like adding such sections, I suggest adding an 
"Applies to:" section to the top the page, containing a bulleted list 
of applicable versions. If the page no longer applies to Wordpress 1.5, 
then add a "Does not apply to:" section containing the single item "* 
WordPress 1.5 or later". Then when each new version of Wordpress is 
released, I can see by looking at those two lists whether a page is (a) 
applicable, (b) not applicable, or (c) not updated yet.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/