help wiki theme improvements

[Matthew East]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 22:13 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>> Well, the idea isn't to create talk pages for every wiki page. It
>> would just be to create a link, which when clicked on for the first
>> time would permit the user to create a page in the usual way. Unless
>> we have an objection in general to using talk pages on the help wiki
>> (I don't have one in principle) then I don't think there should be a
>> problem with adding the link. Or do you think it would be better to
>> avoid talk pages completely? If so, do you have any other feedback
>> mechanisms  in mind?
>
> The issue isn't the talk pages themselves, it's the fact that they'd
> appear in the search results. Presumably the talk pages are intended to
> allow feedback rather than to carry help information. I assume most
> users are looking for the latter when they visit the wiki, so including
> talk pages in the search results would obstruct their search (lots of
> irrelevant/unhelpful results).

Ok, I just wanted to be clear on whether you were objecting to talk
pages generally, or the idea of including the link.

> I'm not saying that we shouldn't use talk pages, but I am saying that we
> should make sure that they don't get in the way of "regular users".

I tend to agree, although I do see that in some cases talk pages may
contain alternative ways of resolving a problem, or discussion of
particular problems with the solutions described on the parent page
which may be relevant to a user. Obviously, the parent page should be
given greater prominence though.

>> > The guys over at the Italian wiki have already taken care of this [1]
>> > (courtesy Leo Iannacone).
>>
>> Yes, we could adapt that. Or use a theme like the start.ubuntu.com one
>> I was working on recently. Either way, I think we need a common theme
>> for all parts of help.ubuntu.com.
>
> It would be great to see this ready in time for the Intrepid release.
> What are our chances, and how might mentoring students be able to help?

Chances are strong. I received today a copy of the current theme used
on help.ubuntu.com/community and intend to merge that into our bzr
branch in the next few days. After that, we can work on improvements
to the theme and anyone (not just mentoring students) who are familiar
with Moin themes and are able to produce themes that we can test can
certainly do so.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF