Thread: Wiki FAQ

Originally Posted by citizen

>> So in essence, you view it as something directed at people who do not understand the topic and not as general advice?

No. But you didn't write an article that gives general advice, just advice that you're sure was best. Apparently you don't know how to write from a third person perspective, and that is a problem to me.

I absolutely protest. I gave advice that coding styles was relative to each one and in no way did I demand or say that someone should use the advice I gave, but simply to keep it in mind.
It's not that it matters so much if it's first-person perspective or third or whatever, as long as the point gets through. We're not writing an uber-professional wiki here.

>> Except yours isn't very informative and uses typical complex language. I like to follow the KISS principle. Keep it simple and don't make it complex.

I never made the claim that the article was complete, or even the best alternative, but I do believe it to be a significant improvement. Instead of whining, perhaps you can propose something? I wouldn't mind if you edited my "typical complex language" with KISS stuff. I only expect you to write it from a third person perspective and keep your opinions out of it. That's my approach and I hope that you are open to this suggestion.

The first thing I would suggest would be to use simple language. Not typical complex language you'd find in articles and such. Honestly, I don't know why they use it so much. When dealing with newbies, as the wiki is partially dedicated to, I believe it's best to use simple language.
Perhaps examples will help get the idea across?

>> I don't think it's a good idea to replace everything someone else just wrote without at least discussing it first.

You wrote the original article without discussing it first. Crappy double-standard is crappy.

So who says we need to discuss something first before submitting a new article? It's a wiki, and it allows contributions. I mentioned it was a draft and obviously it was getting the intended idea across. OF course it can be improved, but that can be done later. So long as the article works, it can be polished later, I think?
Still, I don't think abusing the ability to edit other's articles to replace it with your own is a good idea.
I hadn't seen an indentation article before I published mine, so I didn't think anyone was doing one. The main reason I want one is so that I don't have to repeat it to every newbie who does not indent properly, and I'm sure you and others agree on this since it was the whole idea of the wiki in the first place.
I really don't mind anyone else creating the article, but I do mind someone erasing all my submitted material without discussing it first.

Do you need permission to submit your own wiki article?

Well I'm glad that you also took matters into your own hands and published TWO articles. This whole idea is not going to get anywhere unless we work together. But I've done what I thought I needed to do. I'll write myself out of the conversation if I need to as well.

First and foremost, since you basically erased all my written article without discussing it first, I wanted to preserve all the work I put into it by making a backup article. Not to flash around links around the forum, but to keep in case I or someone else needs it or wants to refer to it.
Second, I didn't think (and I'm not used to wikis either) of submitting it in what laserlight suggested, so unfortunately that is how it turned out. The first one can be deleted (it's edited out anyway) but I want to keep the second one. I wrote it, after all.

Is this acceptable?

FYI, zacs7 the 'lovable-forum-pet' is back from holidays

laserlight, I agree about the legal side of it. Could the content not belong to the public domain? I'm no lawyer, so feel free to offer your advice

>> I absolutely protest. I gave advice that coding styles was relative to each one and in no way did I demand or say that someone should use the advice I gave, but simply to keep it in mind.

Let's try to understand that the indentation article was an expository piece. The newb has no idea what indentation is and simply needs to understand what people are talking about. If you inject your personal preference in an expository piece, then there is little difference between demanding and a simple suggestion as someone may take what you say to be the absolute truth. As laserlight said, I would rather have an answer to a FAQ question presented with facts. This is why I made the effort to explain what indentation means and why it might be important, and tried my best to leave out my opinion.

>> It's not that it matters so much if it's first-person perspective or third or whatever, as long as the point gets through. We're not writing an uber-professional wiki here.

But we agree that third person may get the point across better and in a more objective way? The original FAQ managed to answer questions without resorting to as much of a conversational tone. We aren't fixing people's problems in the wiki like we do in the forum. There should be a difference in the quality of our responses there.

>> The first thing I would suggest would be to use simple language. Not typical complex language you'd find in articles and such. Honestly, I don't know why they use it so much. When dealing with newbies, as the wiki is partially dedicated to, I believe it's best to use simple language.

I'm not against this, but frankly, I may not be able to contribute in this area. I'm very articulate, and careful with what I actually say, and if you start criticizing my diction I simply won't be able to say much. I simply have to leave "simple English" to other people, I'm sorry.

>> Perhaps examples will help get the idea across?

I don't understand how either of our articles were lacking in examples. If you would like to add more, please explain their purpose to the reader as I have in the one example.

>> So who says we need to discuss something first before submitting a new article? It's a wiki, and it allows contributions.

That's double talk. I don't think the idea for wikipedia was to create articles on a first come, first serve basis, and whatever is there is now what we have to improve or what we have to work with, frankly. If the rest of the community agrees that your article is crap, then it will be rewritten. This is true for wikipedia also.

>> I really don't mind anyone else creating the article, but I do mind someone erasing all my submitted material without discussing it first.
>> Do you need permission to submit your own wiki article?

Of course! This means that what I did is just as wrong as what you've done. You knew there was no clear answer to the "question" you answered, so why did you assume you had the authority to write an article?

Let me explain something. If you had wanted to start an article about something as controversial as this topic, then it may have been prudent to simply write the title and then publish your work on the talk page. This may not have occurred to you, but maybe you should have planned it out a little better then. Following that expectation it would allow the other nine members to see what you had done and polish your article before unleashing it to the masses. It was completely rude of you to publish a draft, and that's essentially what happened and I absolutely protest your practices. You're simply not at all less at fault than I am: how rude of you to suggest otherwise.

Now, if we could please get back to work.

Could the content not belong to the public domain?

One problem with trying to dedicate our joint work to the public domain is that it may not be legal, i.e., in some jurisdictions it could be the case that a dedication to the public domain is not allowed (but this is apparently a point of debate among the legally concerned). Another problem is that we are making recommendations, so having a disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability would be a good idea.

In view that we probably want to come close to dedicating the contents to the public domain, a permissive license would be in order. Along those lines, the Academic Free License might be suitable.

I'm no lawyer, so feel free to offer your advice

I am not a lawyer either, and certainly do not offer legal advice, though I freely dispense my layman's understanding of law

I still do not agree with how you just edited and deleted everything that was there before, but whatever.
I absorbed your criticism and rewrote the draft.
Of course, I wrote it in Word and it can't be converted into the wiki on-the-fly, but it's close enough. It's just a draft anyway.
So look at it again and see if it fits your requirements better.
http://cpwiki.sourceforge.net/index....ia/Indentation

Speaking of which, is the wiki running fine -- techincally?

I know there's a few issues (todo with how sf.net works), such as image uploads and alike won't work (nor will SendMail).

Edit: BTW, I've cleaned up the URLs (set up mod_rewrite), so you can use, cpwiki.sf.net/User:Elysia instead of cpwiki.sf.net/index.php/User:Elysia now
I've also noticed it's a bit slow, but that seems to fluctuate. Server load on sf.net?

Yes, it seems slow to me too.
And gee, the discussion pages for the wiki is absolutely horrible. In no way is it actually usable IMO.
Otherwise I don't see a problem.

I deleted Elysia's page: http://cpwiki.sourceforge.net/index....ntation_Elysia

(Don't click on the link, it doesn't work anymore! )

Here's the deletion log, though you may have to be an administrator to view it, I'm not sure: http://cpwiki.sourceforge.net/Special:Log/delete

[edit] How are dashes written? With one dash - like that - or two dashes -- like that? Not that it matters too much, but I think I used "--" in one of the pages I wrote, and someone else used "-". We should probably be consistent. [/edit]

[edit=2] Does anyone else agree with laserlight that this extension should be installed?

I saw that the Wiki was using the GNU FDL as well. Does anyone else think it should be changed? In favour of what license? (Public domain is a bad idea in my opinion, because of the possible liability involved.) [/edit]

[edit=3] I'm going to try to create a logo for cpwiki with the gimp, just because that "set $wgLogo" message is annoying . . . don't worry, I'll post it here before uploading it so you can shoot it down if it's too horrible. [/edit]

[edit=4] So, what do you think? I made the image 135x135, the same as the previous image. I'm not sure if it's important, but it might be. [/edit]

Here's the deletion log, though you may have to be an administrator to view it, I'm not sure

You can view it even when logged out, fyi.

I saw that the Wiki was using the GNU FDL as well. Does anyone else think it should be changed? In favour of what license? (Public domain is a bad idea in my opinion, because of the possible liability involved.)

Yes, I suggested the Academic Free License 3.0, a permissive license for software that can be used for documentation and other works, earlier in this thread.

I'm going to try to create a logo for cpwiki with the gimp, just because that "set $wgLogo" message is annoying . . . don't worry, I'll post it here before uploading it so you can shoot it down if it's too horrible.

So, what do you think? I made the image 135x135, the same as the previous image. I'm not sure if it's important, but it might be.

Just use it, we can always change it to something even better later.

Speaking of which, we need a back-up policy (ie, every x by y)... Only the SQL tables need to be dumped (from phpmyadmin).

The licence has been updated, to AFL 3.0. I agree about Cite (should I try to install it for 1.6.10?)

As for the lag, it's both a problem with MediaWiki and sf.net, sf.net run the servers over a huge cluster -- however there is some bottlenecking when it comes down to using the database. MediaWiki isn't also a 'very quick' script. Hopefully, it'll sort it self out.

By the way, it looks like the links listed on the wiki might have the user's session id appended to the query string. If this is the case, I suggest changing the appropriate setting to use cookies only. Otherwise, it is possible that a user copying and pasting a link from the wiki might accidentally give away his/her session id, thus allowing session hijacking.

The licence has been updated, to AFL 3.0.

Because the license was changed, we should say that if anyone wrote something for the FDL, and doesn't want the information to be released under the AFL for some reason, let us know and we can remove it. Or you can remove it yourself, with an appropriate comment.

[edit] Wiki software in general may be slow, but it can't be that bad: lpod.org

The LPOD software is too slow to use - please go back HERE, to the Moon-Wiki site for LPODs until future notice.

Or maybe it's just their programming. [/edit]

[edit=2] The Wiki might say

Content is available under Academic Free License V3.0.

but the image is still of the GNU FDL. Whoops. [/edit]