documentation and wiki.ubuntu.com - some suggestions for improvements - an outsider's view point.

[shirish]

Hi all,

 I put the following observation on launchpad-users mailing list. I
didn't get any response hence (X-Post) reposting it here so can get
some sense from people in the know. So here goes nothing :-

 I know that wiki.ubuntu.com uses moinmoin and I don't know what
number of reasons it has been stagnating for sometime. (This is a
feeling/observation and an outsider view. May or may not be true,
community members would be better to share what you feel about the
same. )

I have seen two serious issues with MoinMoin which is why I stopped
adding articles.

a. Unable to do section editing :- There is already a good thread on
MoinMoin wiki itself . Perhaps somebody can do something about it.

http://moinmo.in/FeatureRequests/SectionEditing

b. Author history :-  This is my own use-case which I'm sure is
reflected among quite a few people as well. I have written 1-2
articles on wiki.ubuntu.com . While I don't remember which I wrote I
expect the system to remember the same for me and be able  to use
them. I had a smallish interview when they wanted to see what kind of
things I write about as in help documentation. While I tried to search
the wiki I didn't know where to look.

Later on found BOINC (wiki.ubuntu.com/BOINC) otherwise even this would
have been lost.

I am sure if both of these bugs are taken care of there could be quite
some good article submissions  as well. The more easier the tools, the
easier the workflows and easier contrbuting things.

c. Another thing could be use of barnstars or something to promote
people's activity on needed topics or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars

just something that the documentation team and other people would find
interesting as well.

http://ragesoss.com/blog/?p=259

The author rageoss is one who's currently the editor of wikisignpost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ragesoss

-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal
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