Wiki layout

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 1:08 PM, JONATHAN WEISZ wrote:
> ...
> I may be a nobody from nowhere, but I've been using ubuntu since its 
> been around and I've been waiting this whole time for the wiki layout 
> to make some sense.
> ...
> The Fedora Core wiki <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki> frontpage is 
> nicely laid out in grouped panes and the color scheme makes the 
> headings and links stand out from the background color.   Take a look 
> at it, it neat and it runs on MoinMoin.
>
> Gentoo's wiki <http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page> is media wiki and has 
> the typical mediawiki tabular layout, which is readable and allows for 
> quick, attentive browsing.  There is a handy dandy sidebar with the 
> major subheadings that puzzled user would be looking for: Man pages, 
> How-Tos, et-cetra.
>
> Now lets look at the Ubuntu wiki front page.  Firstly its clear that 
> this page is suffering from a dual personality.  Its some wierd 
> chimera of marketing and support.
> ...

I think this is a problem for any wiki that's an adjunct to another 
site, especially when the updates to the other site are slow. Hopefully 
this should improve now that www.ubuntu.com is using MoinMoin rather 
than Plone.

Fedora avoids this problem because the wiki *is* the main site.

The Gentoo wiki's main page may be colorful, but the entire first 
screenful is administrivia about the wiki itself! That's twice as bad 
as the front page of the Ubuntu wiki.

live.gnome.org and wiki.mozilla.org avoid the problem by clearly 
specifying that the wiki is for developers. Maybe this is the approach 
Ubuntu should follow: wiki.ubuntu.com for development, help.ubuntu.com 
for support, www.ubuntu.com for official promotion and non-help docs, 
and maybe promote.ubuntu.com or similar for grassroots marketing 
(<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Presentations> etc).

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