[ubuntu-za] Gripes about the wiki

[Jason Norwood-Young]

Hi Craig

On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 09:55 +0200, Craig A. Adams wrote:
> Hi Jason, All,
> 
> Please see inline for comments.
> 
> On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 09:15 +0200, Jason Norwood-Young wrote:
> > Personally I'm none too happy with the state of the wiki site for
> > Ubuntu-ZA. Here are my main gripes:
> 
> Let me see if I can answer some of these...
> 
> > 1. There are lots of pages missing, like the SyntaxReference and
> > HelpOnEditing page. Since I'm not a wikier, that means I have no idea
> > how to correctly mark up my submitted content.
> 
> There is a fair amount of help available on the wiki.
> 
> For beginners, there is the
> http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/HelpForBeginners page which gives an
> overview of how the wiki works and navigating the wiki.
> 
> On this page, there is also a link to
> http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/HelpOnEditing which gives links to various
> content such as http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/HelpOnFormatting and
> http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/HelpOnLinking as well as some advanced
> usage of the wiki.
> 
> The http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/HelpOnFormatting page provides the
> basic information necessary to format the text on any page you want to
> create or edit.
> 

Okay, then it's just the links that are wrong. On the edit page,
HelpOnEditing and SyntaxReference point to
http://www.ubuntu-za.org/HelpOnEditing and
http://www.ubuntu-za.org/SyntaxReference respectively.

> > 2. There's no way to find out what pages are on the wiki at the moment
> > except by searching. Since there's very little on the wiki, your chances
> > of hitting something on the search are minimal. Also, with no links,
> > there's no chance of other search engines indexing the site properly.
> > The only accessible pages are those of the teams, and that's because
> > they're on the front page.
> 
> The site map can be found by using the LocalSiteMap action on the right
> hand side of the page. See
> http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/FrontPage?action=LocalSiteMap

Okay, I'm looking at the front page but I'm not seeing the link.
Right-hand links are FrontPage, RecentChanges, FindPage and
HelpContents.

> > 3. All the page template names are in another language.
> 
> I don't believe that any templates have been created other than the
> default templates which come as part of MoinMoin. I have not worked with
> templates on MoinMoin, maybe Morgan can assist here.
> 

Page templates I see are:
# AideTemplate
# CategoryTemplate
# HelpTemplate
# HilfeTemplate
# HomepageTemplate
# PagePersonnelleTemplate
# PrésentationTemplate
# SlideShowHandOutTemplate
# SlideShowTemplate
# SlideTemplate
# SupportPapierD'UnePrésentationTemplate
# ThuisbladTemplate
# TransparentTemplate

> > 4. It's kinda ugly, although this is the least of its problems.
> 
> Yup, it is. This is why we have the WikiTeam
> http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/WikiTeam to help improve the site.
> 
> As a side note, the main Ubuntu web site has just moved to Drupal, and
> there is a very nice theme available. This came up during the move to
> the new server, and may be an option for us.
> 

That's good news. 

I guess I just feel the Wiki isn't really getting enough attention, and
that might be because of a lack of community involvement. Hence my
Friday morning bitch-session. There's so much that could happen with the
Wiki - how-to's, local news, local success stories etc. But the lack of
community involvement is due in part to the Wiki not being a great
destination on the web for Ubuntu information, and it being a bit hard
to use and clunky. I think some more attention to detail and some more
action on the Wiki would perpetuate a growing cycle of involvement on
the Wiki.

I also think that some more info on *how* to interact with the Wiki
would be helpful. Like the 3G how-to I just posted - I'm not sure I put
it in the correct place (should it be under FrontPage or Wiki?), and I
found marking it up to be tricky. An introduction to using the Wiki,
disseminated on this list, I think would go a long way to lowering the
barriers.

J