Make Wiki more user friendly?

[lemming86_au]

Hi Everyone,

It's no secret that the current Wiki is not exactly intuitive to use.

Maybe its time to change Wikis, Atlassian Confluence is great & they offer licenses for open source projects for free:
http://www.atlassian.com/opensource/

Regards,
Josh

[hari]

> It's no secret that the current Wiki is not exactly intuitive to use.

could you elaborate on that a bit? What is not intuitive? Which exact features does that other product provide that help with any existing issues?

br Hari

[colinjones]

I don't find the wiki un/counter-intuitive whatsoever. Works very nicely... certainly the content could do with a revamp as it clearly has "evolved" over time and so links, dupes, and stagnant/outdated/unversioned content can make it less effective than it could be, but there are a limited number of hands to perform the updates. And none of this has anything to do with the software itself. I have a standing item on my list to write an exhaustive (!) troubleshooting guide, but I think I am going to wait until 0810 goes full release before I get stuck into it properly (its just a skeleton of topics at the moment).

[posde]

It's no secret that the current Wiki is not exactly intuitive to use.

The wiki *SOFTWARE* only has a single problem (the search phrase needs to be a minimum of 4 characters), which can easily be circumvented by using Google with site:wiki.linuxmce.org

Apart from that, the CONTENT can always be better organized. Feel free to do that!

[lemming86_au]

I'm just saying, compared to other wikis I have used, there are some features that may seem a bit daunting to new / inexperienced users.
These are the sort of people that need to find it easy to use, they may be wanting to contribute to project in some way, but don't have experience in areas like programming. Adding to / updating the wiki would be a great way for them to do that.

Some of this feeling comes from my first experiences with the wiki, my first 10 minutes were spent looking for the "add page" button or link.
The fact you need a page on the wiki describing how to add a page, sort of highlights my point (& that page I found by accident).
A WYSIWYG style editor wouldn't hurt either.

[colinjones]

Lemming86_au - I have to say I think that the "canonical" wiki has to be Wikipedia, without question.

The way to add a new page, is simply edit the URL with the name of the page you want to add at the end. It goes to a blank page and you hit Edit... off you go.

This is identical to Wikipedia!!! I don't really recall a WYSIWYG editor for any wiki, to be honest... inherently that is going to be difficult because you are creating HTML in a web page... and again, editing pages in our wiki is identical to Wikipedia.

Anything can be easier, but I don't think setting the bar higher than Wikipedia is useful. It really isn't that hard to create or edit pages.

[niz23]

He´s talking about xwiki (www.xwiki.org) which Confluence is based upon.
They have a wysiwyg editor which is kind a neat and a whole bunch of other functionality that no other wiki platform have today.
That´s why they say it´s "wiki 2.0". It´s far more than just a plain wiki.

I use it extensively to document stuff I work with and find it very useful.
But...

We don´t need the features xwiki can provide except for the (maybe) wysiswyg functionality that can help a users to easily contribute to our wiki.
Especially those win guys that are used to a fancy gui.

Anyway wiki syntax is not especially hard to learn so it´s really not needed. imho.

Just my two cents.

/niz23

[Zaerc]

If people really want to contribute they will.  The rest are just looking for excuses not to, and they will always find something. 

Anyway it's not like you need a degree in computer science to use the current wiki and switching to something that isn't open would be a big step in the wrong direction in my opinion.

[totallymaxed]

Hi Everyone,

It's no secret that the current Wiki is not exactly intuitive to use.

Maybe its time to change Wikis, Atlassian Confluence is great & they offer licenses for open source projects for free:
http://www.atlassian.com/opensource/

Regards,
Josh

I think we can agree that the current Wiki is built with the defacto standard in Wiki software. As with anything...you need to invest a little time in understanding how the Wiki is edited and maintained. That investment is really quite small and once you have made it you can really contribute to this project in a very valuable way.

What we need is more people contributing to it. Nothing less and nothing more.

Andrew

[Techstyle]

As somebody who come from a Windows background and never contributed to an open source project until getting involved with LMCE, I can say that once you realise addding a page is as easy as typing:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/<your new page>

and that if you are not sure how what to do next look for a similar page and copy the format or look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

after that it is easy.  I now contribute to the Wiki every piece of hardware I use

the one thing I would like to see is the addition of a map that users could add a map pin showing (approx) location so that users in close proximity could help each other out and the community could get a sense of where the users are.

[totallymaxed]

As somebody who come from a Windows background and never contributed to an open source project until getting involved with LinuxMCE, I can say that once you realise addding a page is as easy as typing:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/<your new page>

and that if you are not sure how what to do next look for a similar page and copy the format or look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

after that it is easy.  I now contribute to the Wiki every piece of hardware I use

the one thing I would like to see is the addition of a map that users could add a map pin showing (approx) location so that users in close proximity could help each other out and the community could get a sense of where the users are.

Google maps is your friend in this I would think...but I would not put more than a little effort into the 'User Map'

Andrew

[colinjones]

As somebody who come from a Windows background and never contributed to an open source project until getting involved with LinuxMCE, I can say that once you realise addding a page is as easy as typing:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/<your new page>

and that if you are not sure how what to do next look for a similar page and copy the format or look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

after that it is easy.  I now contribute to the Wiki every piece of hardware I use

the one thing I would like to see is the addition of a map that users could add a map pin showing (approx) location so that users in close proximity could help each other out and the community could get a sense of where the users are.

he he, wouldn't kill people actually to fill in their profile and indicate location (and sex, age, etc!!)

[geekyhawkes]

Not that I am that well informed, but i am planning on adding an up to date wiki "start page" for newbies that links all of the relevant threads, in order so they could just follow each one and end up with an MCE machine installed and running.  Its not perfect as I my first draft didnt give me a stable machine (for whatever reason). 

I agree with the statements above, wiki is fine to use but contributors are whats missing.   If the documentation is up to date then it will reduce the silly posts in the forum (which i am guilty of i know when i cannot find the information in the wiki).

Also, we have to remember that the guys who really understand MCE are busy getting 810 ready for release, so I think it is on the "normal" users to produce decent wiki guides.

[tschak909]

You have our support. Just do it

-Thom