Pandora Wiki Cleanup in progress

[Wally]

Like ED, I'm not entirely sure what just happened, but I thought I'd make a quick reply to a comment...

I think what we really need to do is have a separate blank wiki for us to sandbox around in, get things right and stuff. So we can keep progress and everyone can agree on what is changed etc then merge back to the original wiki as things are not structured at all and thats what comrade is trying to do.

You can do that in the current Pandorawiki. Just create a new page like:

User:Wally/article-name


That can be your work-in-progress or alternate version of whatever article you're working on. Anything that follows that format is a personal sandbox page and you have freedom to do anything you want within it (within legal limits, of course...), just don't connect it to the regular non-sandbox pages on the wiki.


This is standard operating procedure within Wikipedia proper, I see no reason why it wouldn't work here.


In our case there could even be a little notice on top of the "standard" page that there's also an alternate version of the article present [[here]]. Linux-SWAT could make all his updates in the sandbox page (which he's more comfortable with) while other people could use those updates to update the "regular" version of the page.


That is, if no compromise can be found. Personally speaking, I would never try to make major changes to an article like this without first making the revised version of it in MY sandbox and asking the article maintainer if he's okay with those changes. If the reply is affirmative, only THEN would I change it over.


(also, I'm sorry for being away all these months and not being around to help out on the Pandorawiki...)

Ah Brilliant. Perhaps the articles related to the project need to be updated first. I have some time on the train today and should be able to start working on some refreshed articles or play Jedi Knight 2 whatever comes first

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Ahhh, you got to love these 'open' systems like Wiki's...

 

[Esn]

Okay... I just checked the editlogs and I have to ask, what the heck is Kingu doing? What's the point of aggregating perfectly-serviceable pages into enormously-long super-pages that are hard to navigate and edit?

I suppose this was discussed somewhere?..

Also, Wally, please don't delete redirects such as "Purple Tint of Death" and "PTOD" (which redirected to the hardware defects page). Redirect pages are harmless and improve user useability; there is rarely a good reason to delete them. There is an option to "hide redirects" in the "All pages" page, so what you've done is basically to reduce useability of the wiki for no reason at all.

I also don't think it is a good idea to delete project pages just because you think the project is "probably abandoned". Mention that in the introduction of the page, sure, but if I was the one who created that page and came back to it, I would be pretty pissed.

Also, I disagree with the deletion of "Included Package List" even if it WAS outdated, it was accurate for an older version of the OS.

Looking through the edit history more carefully, it is clear that this huge overhaul of everything was done in haste and resulted in some weirdness or clumsiness (check out http://pandorawiki.org/Hardware_defects and the clumsy way that "Purple Tint of Death" was merged into it - again for no good reason. "Hardware defects" was a summary list, with a separate page created for "Purple Tint of Death" because it was a longer description that wouldn't fit on a "summary" page).

To be honest, maybe you guys fixed some stuff, but you also broke a lot of stuff.

I have a good mind to go through everything and undelete most of what you guys deleted, because many of the decisions just make no sense to me (and are obviously pissing off some page maintainers).

 

[Wally]

Alrighty . I think the reality is we need to discuss things more. Do you have skype or something ESN?

Or get on IRC?

 

[Esn]

I would prefer that the discussion be public. This is a wiki, and the way to run a wiki is by open discussion and consensus. This is not a hierarchy, as admins we must remember that without the users we are nothing.

So yes, a public discussion takes longer, but it means that you don't get situations like this. And what's the rush?

In general, I don't think it's a good idea to force changes on page-creators - any changes to make the wiki more cohesive as a whole (which are generally a good idea) should cause as little disruption to the page maintainers as possible. If that means that there are a variety of page styles on the wiki - so be it! As long as all of them are clear and understandable and are integrated with each other (which only requires a few strategically-placed wikilinks and category placements).

Also, deletion should be an option of last resort - if something is outdated, this can be mentioned in the introduction. If it's making the category lists unclean, the page can be moved to a special category (i.e. "Categoryotentially abandoned projects"). But the change should be as minimal as possible while still having the desired result.

 

[Wally]

Fair enough. IRC could be public / live and it means we don't need to wait for people to MSG back


I do agree with SOME redirects such as http://pandorawiki.org/PTOD as it is definitely easier to remember / type. So those should be readded yes.

 

[Esn]

Fair enough. IRC could be public / live and it means we don't need to wait for people to MSG back

Well, that's the thing - I would prefer to wait for people and discuss this in a traditional forum format. Even a public live IRC discussion means that the number of people discussing will be low (since we all live in different time zones and some of us are more busy than others), and leads to a good chance that if important things are decided, someone will be quite unhappy (like here).

I do agree with SOME redirects such as http://pandorawiki.org/PTOD as it is definitely easier to remember / type. So those should be readded yes.

What is your rationale for removing most redirects? You mentioned one rationale in the first post, which I've shown is not an issue. Are there any others?

 

[comradekingu]

I hope someone reads this post.

The rationale for removing most redirects is because most redirects are made in error, redundant, confusing, bad grammar, or in some way trying to patch that info should have been semantic, but isn't.  Even before anything was done there were dead links everywhere. Category tags in no way representing the actual categories. It was a place of hoarding poor construction and practice making it a organic nightmare of nested menus and "hidden" info.

Then there was a whole slew of things documenting things that had nothing to do with the pandora, like VLC. In theory that could be a good thing, but in practice it was never good, and turned worse as time progressed. Then there were things that activly hurt the project, like the ICP pages.

On the pandora wiki there seems to be a semi-order of things now, that is no accident. Before it was a cluster of some info here, some info there, so old that it was counterproductive.  With translations to old versions of lore long since forgotten. Many more things are wrong, or have been, but that is what it is.

 

[double7]

I don't care if you use a bagpipe, i want my all pages in their original state.

I'll put them on another server and i'll be free from you.

I fully support Linux-Swat here.

It's his work and no one may touch it without permission.

It look's like you two don't know what a wiki is for. Could you please remember that you are working with an OPENpandora? We are telling everyone a "Welcome to the Pandora wiki" on the main page. Everything you contribute to a wiki is no longer "your" work alone, it's an open invitation for others to contribute too. As we are all individual some contributions are very good, some are not. That's a part of the game, all of us should learn to accept these basics please.

I have a better idea: restore the database, and create a wiki especially for vandals.

I did understood your feeling after i saw the actual result of the single wiki page. Anyhow, the page naming syntax you used could be done better. Don't close your mind that much that you reject discussion about that topic. If there is someone who could give your content a better structure you should merge your skills and took the best out of you two.

I think what we really need to do is have a separate blank wiki for us to sandbox around in, get things right and stuff.

I think the ideal solution here is to have ED or someone host a second temporary wiki

That doubles the server maintenance and administration work. ESN wrote it already, that's what the USER: pages could be used for.

He has a backup. I havent done anything besides change the organizing of the scattered pages. I will even organize them for him

You don't do it for him. If you do it you do it for all of us. Please don't tell me you like the actual page with the 200+ sections of the same level. That's a mess worth a click on the preview button. For the save button you should have bring in the structure of some kind of chapter formatted table of content. The way it is it's no wonder that the author feels offended.

 

[comradekingu]

That is my personal reason for editing, yes, but i dont suppose that matters here.

Anyway, i got my constructive feedback. All pages will be moved away from the wiki in return for undeletion of all individual pages. I have done that now. I made extra care to save the last revision, and in the cases the last revision was left blank by edits /FAQ section, i restored the older copy.

That may not be the smoothest way of going about things, but im happy, as it would have taken days for me to fix. Pages are possibly going to be accepted back when they adhere to the standards, aka fixed state.

Edit: upon closer inspection the pnd compatibility list actually doesnt do anyhting. It isnt based on any revision of slackware, and it doesnt state what version of the pnd was used.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

My pages are back.

Hope nothing is lost.

For the sake of Slack users, thanks everyone who contributed to the saving of my work.

 

[double7]

That is my personal reason for editing, yes, but i dont suppose that matters here.

Anyway, i got my constructive feedback.

Thank you and don't feel too sad about this. I had to learn that with the drastic compatibility list too. I did a migration of the 1.x list into the actual (2.x) list to give the wiki users (the readers) a single point list as the drastic version update was that good that in my humble opinion it could be assumed that all 1.x games will run better on the new version. That hours of migration work were reverted as the the drastic author would like to use the list for easier bug tracking of the actual version. My personal opinion didn't change but i did eat humble pie in respect to the software author. So i have to handle two lists instead of one. Shrug.

If we all do so then we have many different structures within the wiki and yes, it will be chaos. But a creative one.

It would be nice to have a well structured wiki with matching translations of similar pages. But it's a lot of work to achieve that. All authors have to be on the same high level of editing skill. We don't have resources to train them before they get their edit permissions and we can't put the hurdle that high because it would scare away the potential authors. But if you want to avoid lots of migration work you can let others do it before, which leads to the point that you have to train the authors.

My pages are back.

Hope nothing is lost.

For the sake of Slack users, thanks everyone who contributed to the saving of my work.

Hope is never lost. Let's hope you find your way back to your nickname. The most important part of a SWAT is the team. Even if you are on a one man mission the team could provide you with essential information which shouldn't be ignored.

Double luck to you two.

 

[comradekingu]

Can this double seven get wiki rights(?), he makes sense.

 

[ekianjo]

That was a fun read. It always get interesting when partisans of "open stuff" don't seem to like the way wikis work

 

[comradekingu]

Well its good and bad, the best of breed brings along a lot of breeds, some prosper and live on, some fail, then there are always the in between, if everyone shares that is a healthy ecosystem although it seems ineffective. Im glad linus is hard on letting things into the linux kernel, because that takes cares of problems early, ill take linus-drama over broken stuff any day.

Anyway, we made progress on the wiki, http://pandorawiki.org/NewMain_page  this is what it has come to. Im not going to explain anything (except the numbers are pageviews and are going to be removed later on), try for yourself to see if you can get a hang of it. If not, or if you have any feedback, suggestions, please please let us know.

These are the issues that i see (we need more brains on this):

soleil/slack needs work, the pnd sections overlap a lot, advanced user manual is 200 views and very short, need an image of the actual pandora found edit: needs to be recent silver one, Multisite username check‏‎(207) needs to be put in a category, maybe tutorials?, need a screen/display category, maybe a case, led one too , maybe add PXML archetype to end of PXML specification, update wiki todo with an overview of what info will need updating and when. There is also no documentation for XFCE, which is strange since that is default.

Semantic info. One "hardware documentation" where each of them go Leds:rgb 3 .. battery: 4200 .. keyboard:qwerty .. and have that same info at the top of the individual categories and then the extensive info after that

 

[foxblock]

Anyway, we made progress on the wiki, http://pandorawiki.org/NewMain_page this is what it has come to. Im not going to explain anything (except the numbers are pageviews and are going to be removed later on), try for yourself to see if you can get a hang of it. If not, or if you have any feedback, suggestions, please please let us know.

I think it looks horrible and very confusing (purely from the aesthetics point of view).

This is mostly because the line spacing is very low, which makes it look like one block of text, instead of multiple links to different topics (compare to the line spacing on a ordered or unordered list).

The icons are neat, but some aren't drawn correctly on my end (MIDI for example).

Overall I am not sure we need that much information on the frontpage. Sure, it's nice to get to the most requested pages in one click, but it makes the frontpage look very crowded and confusing, in my eyes.

Also things like an introductory text and the whole "links" section is missing (these might not be very helpful for experienced users, but in my eyes this wiki should also appeal to new users and new potential customers).

I would go for much less links. I don't think links to individual projects (no matter how popular) or specific modems, etc. should be directly linked on the frontpage. I would rather add a bunch of "important" links to category pages like http://pandorawiki.org/Emulators (and make those a hub for the whole category, instead of a mostly textural introduction).

Instead of the icons and "code"-like text, I would go for small category images, coloured boxes and list formatting (like en.wikipedia.org).

I am aware this is a work in progress and at the end might not look exactly like it currently does, but without further info I might as well assume it will.

 

[ekianjo]

(purely from the aesthetics point of view).

Gee, it does look awful. You guys need a designer in your team.  

And let's not talk about information overload. 

 

[comradekingu]

ekianjo

Let us talk about information overload, lets break down the process and see what happened and what can be done to improve on it. You were able to determine we need a designer, that makes you qualified, the job is yours.

foxblock

How are you confused, describe that notion of engagement.

It is not a lot of information, it is _all_ the information. When it looks really cluttered its because it is. It means there is redundancy going on, too verbose naming/category conventions.

We eat our own dogfood. If the Slackware categories /are/all/wrong/slackware then i want that to be blatantly clear. I hid that momentarily since Linux-Swat promised to do something. But unless its a problem that is going away it needs to be solved, not hidden.

We can hide the individual modem pages, i wanted to merge, but whoever made them wanted them seperate, and they are good, so merit comes first.

Hiding has not taken place because that is lazy, and we do that last.

We can do bulleted lists, but less markup is more. Switched to in-line indentation to save on vertical screen estate.

How does one colour links in a non-invasive way? We could do it to the icons.

The visuality will get a little bit better once the debugging viewcount can be taken away.

What utf-8 icons arent working, give me an extensive list or a  screenshot, also tell me what system is on your end.

What is this "Links" section you speak of? I only know of Community_Links and thats outdated/not up to par.

Edit: Ok, i got it now, we arent trying to re-invent navigation, but as far as i can tell there should be a mention of the repo somewhere. There are plenty examples of trying to reinvent the repo on the wiki, so that needs to stop.

 

[graupelschauer]

I will not discuss the way i wrote my pages.

I did not look into the different versions of the discussed wiki pages but comments like that make everything worse. Why can't you just tell why you structured your pages like you did? Why do you act so offensive while comradekingu is trying to be polite all the time? If you are angry it may help to wait some time until you post so you have some time to calm down. Please remember that you are part of a community and you don't own your wiki content.

...but that's just my opinion

 

[comradekingu]

We have moved on

graupelschauer
help figure out how many of the 14 pnd categories are needed, and what to do to bring the number down.