<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Hi there There has been some discussion about deleting outdated pages in help.ubuntu.com/community. I think that the many outdated pages discourage people to use the wiki. AND: The lack of a concept for a "page lifecycle" may also discourage many contributors from updating the pages, as it may look like a "hopeless" task. Or did I miss something here? Different concepts are used (version-specific pages, e.g. <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallLirc/Maverick">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallLirc/Maverick</a>, or one paragraph per version, e.g.: <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AiptekTablet">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AiptekTablet</a>) I try to make some SUGGESTIONS. To be discussed. SUGGESTION 1: Versioning guidelines. Each page... <ul> <li> 1a) ...SHOULD be valid for all Ubuntu releases that are currently documented. (Avoid version-specific pages).</li> <li> 1b) ...SHOULD NOT mention the Ubuntu version or codename ("Natty") in its pagename.</li> <li> 1c) ...SHOULD contain version icons [to be created] on the top level, or below each 1st level heading, in order to show the user for which versions the chapter is valid. </li> <li> 1d) ...SHOULD be generic: If possible, cover all recent Ubuntu versions in the same text, newest first.</li> <li> 1e) ...SHOULD contain titles referring to the Ubuntu version IF it is necessary to re-write entire chapters for different versions. Newest first. </li> </ul> SUGGESTION 2: Archiving concept: Any current page should cover the last 1 to 5 Ubuntu releases. Pages should be cleaned as follows after each LTS (long term support) release. * 1) Copy the full page content to a new page, append "_v2010" to its name: "v" means version and 2010 is the year in which the page was last modified. * 2) Add an "Archived page" tag [to be created]: "Archived: This page is archived. It should not be modified. More info..." * 3) Go back to the original page. Clean its contents: Remove whatever refers to versions older than the previous LTS version. In the first line, add a link: "Documentation for older Ubuntu versions was moved to this [archive page]" [link to mypage_v2010]. (NB if the entire page was outdated, the original page would now be empty. In this case, it is recommended to tag it either for deletion, or for expansion) This rule would result in the following "page lifecycle": - 2012, March: The page covers 11.10 / 11.04 / 10.10 / 10.04 (LTS) - 2012, April: 12.04 (LTS) arrives. The page covers 5 versions: 12.04 (LTS) / 11.10 / 11.04 / 10.10 / 10.04 (LTS). - 2012, September: The page is "cleaned" to the last version (12.04). Contents referring to 11.10, 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 go to the "archive page". - Content for new Ubuntu releases is added in 2012-Oct, 2013-Apr, 2013-Oct. Then we start over. Regards! Manuel </body> </html>