Linux Mint Forums

Hi.

Is it only me that have a intense hate for wiki? - sure its nice for people to edit pages etc, but damm it hard to find information.

I really misses the old days with news servers - easy to navigate, fast to find information - but NNTP is dead?

Back to the question ...

Is it a great way for (ie Mint) to spread howto's etc the wiki way? - or is it better with a forum, or just a CMS with a version control on information.

What do you want if you could choose ?

/~HJess

Hallo

Well.. I miss alot of basic stuff.

Navigation? .. just for a start.

Then there is the style issue.

What I define as a good page would be something like
http://www.fedorafaq.org/

For discussion - I think a forum is a bad idea! or at least it should be modified. I really hate that there are no threads - a discussion/debate often ends up in a mix of .. confusion. - The way to do it is like this http://drupal.org/node/223614

Just remember this is just point of view, i deeply respect the choice of CMS/Wiki for mint - As long I'm not working whit it.

/~ HJess

Hjess wrote:Well.. I miss alot of basic stuff. Navigation? .. just for a start. Then there is the style issue.

In my opinion, the 'search and hyperlink' navigation paradigm that Wikis use is an excellent way to traverse large collections of information. In fact, I have yet to see a better approach to navigating large data sets. However, I would definitely be interested to hear about any examples you have of better approaches.

On the style issue; every Wiki engine I have used (MediaWiki, PmWiki, TWiki, etc.) has a unique style - so I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean when you say that in general Wiki's have a 'style issue'?

Hjess wrote:What I define as a good page would be something like
http://www.fedorafaq.org/

That's certainly a nice FAQ page, however an FAQ isn't the limit of the goals of the Linux Mint documentation project. With more information, comes the need for better display and navigation techniques (such as a Wiki or CMS).

Hjess wrote:For discussion - I think a forum is a bad idea! or at least it should be modified. I really hate that there are no threads - a discussion/debate often ends up in a mix of .. confusion. - The way to do it is like this http://drupal.org/node/223614

The first thing that I do when I come across a forum that has tree-based threads (like in your example) is to switch it to a flat view. So it's clear that this is a personal taste issue. Though I must say that everyone I've talked to about this (granted not a large test group ) prefers the flat view, and it's my guess that if you polled Linux Mint users then it would be a landslide victory for the flat view.

Hjess wrote:Just remember this is just point of view, i deeply respect the choice of CMS/Wiki for mint - As long I'm not working whit it.

It is of course your choice not to get involved because you think that the wrong tools have been selected, but if you would like to convince other people that this is actually the case then you may need to come up with stronger arguments than you have presented thus far.

[---SNiP 'Couse it was getting confusing---]

I agree with you that the wiki is good at data sheets. BUT! - when you are dealing with HOWTO's and similar it really think the wiki is a bad approach.

At my point of view its better to have a document with version control. Like "my howto version 1" fits - and the receive update/notes and releases updated documents.

Its great to have a wiki, but what if a "old" user need old information? - then the wiki fails because its all new! - and if you are very lucky some are new and some are old. - Where is the review ? (And honestly who would like to make a rewrite of a complete wiki?)

I'm not here to convince other people that the choice of is wrong (Thats up to one individual) - but I've far rather listen to other experience with wikis - and online documentation handling.

I've will poste some links regaring tree view.

/~HJess

Hi Ed!

Great to know ! - an off course I will be supporting mint in all off my efforts. This is why I'm doing it

Didt this dicussion went a bit offtopic ..


Wiki - God/Bad? - And why?

Pro and cons for wiki - and is there any better alternatives ?


/~HJess

My multiforums host equipped us with a mediawiki installation.
I haven't found a particular use for it quite just yet, but I'm working on it.

I don't have a problem with it, at all, I treat it like I treat anything else. If you close your eyes, you can pretend it isn't there.