Unsolved new wiki - pagenames / namespaces

[stryd_one]

Thanks for the input man.

what is the core benefit of doing this big old page to new page thing as opposed to simply improving the existing wiki incrementally?

I see your point... I'm not sure why it was originally conceived this way, but I do think it's a fairly good idea, because well.... We're volunteers, working to a short and loose timeframe... Once we start, we may be very busy for a while, and that would leave the wiki in a strange state, waiting for our return. Who knows, we may not ever finish (unlikely but possible) and then the wiki would be totally trashed :/ I think this way is the safest...

The problem with a redirect, aside from breaking this "leave the existing wiki in place until the new one is all finished" approach, is that in some areas the info on one old page will be spread across a few new pages....

Anyway, I passed out. It was late, OK? ;) I'm back into it now.  hhehehe

[This N°9]

We *really* need to get on top of a way to flag the old pages when we have migrated their content to the new pages.

I suppose to add some comment like "this page has been overhauled to the new wiki <link>. If you modifiy this page, please also modifiy this comment and write what you changed!" on the top of the page.

[This N°9]

what is the core benefit of doing this big old page to new page thing as opposed to simply improving the existing wiki incrementally?

I think from time to time it's good to setup things in a new way from ground up, taking the old resources and tight them up etc. I need to do this in my citchen sometimes if I didn't clean up for some time  :) It just make things more thight and handy for the reader, there is a process of reflecting things once more, filter them and skip information that is not usefull or modifiy it to fit clearer to the rest etc.

In my eyes this is the benefit of bulding a new one from ground up, taking the resources of the old one as "source" or "input".

[stryd_one]

Hahah strangely, my kitchen is next on my to-do list :D

[stryd_one]

Wiki overhaul progress

Check it out. I'm pretty sure the layout is all sorted now, so I think we can pretty much move in there and just start plugging away at it.

[Max Romantschuk]

I think that it makes more sense with a flatter structure and sections in a document for definition of what something is and how to build it etc. With a proper table of contents pages being largeish isn't so much of a problem.

Note: I'll be happy to offer my input, but currently I'm "fairly" occupied by four little kids who are reeeally wound up waiting for xmas... ;)

[stryd_one]

Sorry max moved this in here because the other thread is meant for progress reports on the top-down approach to the 'index' page list.

There are three problems with the flatter structure that come to mind:

1) You can't always link other pages as easily, so it breaks the modular layout durisian conceived and i love

2) It makes for really big pages that scare people off, especially newbies (which results in the dreaded "i searched and found nothing" response, when they actually searched, found it, and ran screaming from the alphabet attack)

3) It makes template maintenance really difficult, which can lead to the kind of random editng we're now trying to clean.

Plus, now that we know about this index page, it makes it really easy to find the page you want quickly, should the search engine and the structured layout fail you somehow.... So having it broken up is less of an issue.

Sorry mate but I think a change in structure now, would be too late... We're kinda past that stage...

Bah, humbug! :D

[Max Romantschuk]

With large pages I mostly meant having a single page covering the core module for example, with sections for what it is, how to build it, how to connect stuff etc. Or is the plan to break everything up into small individual pages? You can always just link a specified section within a page, right?

But sematics and structure are good, and as I've said I'm still just starting to get my bearings. I do plan to add as much info as possible to the wiki in the future though. :)

[stryd_one]

With large pages I mostly meant having a single page covering the core module for example, with sections for what it is, how to build it, how to connect stuff etc.

That's already like that, no?:

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=home:mbhp:module:core

Every page in the new wiki structure (under :home:*) is built from a template like that, which is what the :wikify:* namespace is about. For EG the core page is built from the module template.

Or is the plan to break everything up into small individual pages? You can always just link a specified section within a page, right?

No, you can only link where there's an anchor, IE, only to a header >=H3. That sounds OK, but once your documents become complex, a great deal of useful info is <H3 and can't be externally linked. Regardless, if the pages are well structured like our new ones, it's not really a problem.

In the thread you originally replied to, I posted a link to the index page, which shows every page on the wiki. I think you've misunderstood, and thought that is our new wiki documentation - it's not, it's a list of stuff we need to copy into the new pages, and then trash.

[Max Romantschuk]

I guess I was just confused when I couldn't find a single old page linking to a new page.

Old: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=core_module

New: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=home:mbhp:module:core

Right?

Because there was talk about putting some kind of info about the page having been overhauled. Basically I'm just trying to get all this straight so I don't fsck up when I find a chance to add/improve something... :)

.max

[stryd_one]

I guess I was just confused when I couldn't find a single old page linking to a new page.

Ahhh. Yeh, the idea was to leave the existing wiki untouched so we don't bother people while we tinker with the new one :)

Old: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=core_module

New: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=home:mbhp:module:core

Right?

Bingo.

Because there was talk about putting some kind of info about the page having been overhauled.

Yeh, we needed (as I think it was you who pointed out most recently) to have a way to know what was done and what was not. Also, as it occurred to me while considering a solution, that we could also need a way to know what we still had left to do - don't want to miss any pages!

So, we didn't have any really good ideas, and we were >< that close to marking the existing pages, which is a bit of a bummer, but we didn't have any other way... But I had been trying to find a list of all pages - that way, we can easily know which pages are done and which are not - we just work from top to bottom :)

That's what that other thread was about -  I found that list (it's on a button down the bottom of every page hahah). When you're working on the overhaul, you post in Wiki overhaul progress and say what pages you're working on, so that we don't collide, and then post when you're done, saying where you finished. That way, the next guy knows where to start.

[This N°9]

overhaul process:

I like the idea of stryd, but there's a bigger risk to miss some links, say somebody overhauls a page, and on this one you have links to a page that doesnt exist yet.. one way would be to setup this link to point to the proper place, and leave it uncreated until it's the next candidate in the list.

the other approach would be to start from existing pages and follow the links and create the pages that are not created yet. this way the new wiki would "grow" like a tree from bottom up. maybe some kind of "overhaul" wiki-page would also be a variant, like to list all the new pages that are created in a tree manner, and add the sources to it:

-home

-home:project [overhauled from project]

-...

just a proposition

[stryd_one]

Edit whoops i deleted half that post!

I don't think it's possible to miss pages if you do all of them. That's the point of that list :)

You said "one way would be to setup this link to point to the proper place, and leave it uncreated until it's the next candidate in the list." Well, the best way is to create this page, but leave it as a bare-bones copy of the template. That way, it's easier to create future links to the bare-bones-placeholder, and when you reach the old version of that page, you'll just be copying it to the appropriate place in the template. That's what I've been doing with the top-down approach so far, and it works well.

To use the 'tree' analogy, you do the branches of the tree, but the leaves go on in the top-down approach.

But, yeh, there's nothing stopping us from doing both.

The 'grow like a tree' thing you mentioned is very good, for the reasons you mentioned, but it will leave pages behind (there are lots of orphans). What you can do however, is do the 'grow like a tree' thing, but just don't mark the old pages as being 'overhauled' yet. Then when we get to them in the top-down list approach, it will be clear that it's already done, and the person doing the top-down approach will just skip over it.

I'm sure this approach works, because we've all been doing the growing tree method so far, and while doing the top-down method I had a few nice surprises with pages that were already done :)