[wp-docs] Documentation Drive

[Arlen Beiler]

What the codex needs is not more attribution, or links, or anything else of
that nature. By now you all know that I believe in the Codex very much. A
couple things that can go a long way in helping to establish a site are
aesthetics and functionality. A site has to have enough of both. One thing I
might mention is that the codex does not have a full-time management team
like wikipedia does. Of course, the team only needs to have one or two
people, but they are needed full-time. If a wikipedian comes around ready to
work, and finds out that it doesn't have some of the important functionality
of Wikipedia, they might get frustrated if there isn't a place to propose
additional functionality (although they probably would stay for a while,
like I am).   ;-) By *management team* I mean people who have access to the
FTP, and everyone knows they do, and they have the final say in
functionality changes, though I think major design changes should go higher
up.

Another thing a site needs is ease of use. Coming from WikiMedia, it seems a
bit hard to use as it is. When I mentioned this to someone, they said that
people can always use the MediaWiki skin. That certainly work, but it
doesn't have the site bar, and I think that major contributers should use
the default skin some of the time anyway, so they know what their styles and
page designs look like to people stopping by for answers. Also, would it be
possible to redesign all of wordpress.org to make the links a bit darker and
get rid of the gray? It strains my eyes a bit to look at them, though not
much. :-)

Also, the license is, they say, incompatible with Wikipedia, which I say is
a no-no. Wikipedia recently did a licence change, so we could too, it
isn't unprecedented. If we change the license, we have to do it before the
doc drive, or else we will have more problems.

Finally, I totally believe that mediawiki is the right thing to use for the
job. I really like contributing codex, and am waiting to *par*ticipate in
the *an*ticipated doc drive.

Cheers
-Arlen

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 4:29 AM, hakre <hanskrentel at yahoo.de> wrote:
>> Finding a way to make this process work without the "I" and credit and
>> make it a team effort is the challenge.
>
> Good point, the only answer I can give is: By creating collaborative work.
> Therefore this would need a healthy community. Communication problems can
> not be solved by software.
>
> You should spend some time with team-leaders who have some experience with
> such issues (wikipeidians *might* be nice to talk with, but if you find
> contact to someone how has experiences in establishing intranets in larger
> companies is a good start as well). I had the feeling next to all the
> shortcomings this world has, doing collaborative work in a wiki software
> like the mediawiki we already have (not that it won't need a lot of love)
> does fairly good work at that end - even in the times of today.
>
> I could imagine if the codex wiki had a working editor for example, this
> would engage others to contribute more. That's something I see unfixed for
> ages. Next to that a little CSS touch-up maybe? What should be done first
> here is to run a little usability test iteration over the wiki, because
with
> so light changes there you could make a big difference.
>
> And next to that, there is a whole new world to discover. E.g. if you want
> to better structure content I suggest to extend wiki with semantics:
>
> http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms
>
> That can be pretty rocking (and save the project resources while doing the
> redesign, if the current suggestions have not set into stone yet).
>
> hakre
>
>
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