[Bf-docboard] 4th November Meeting Summary

[Tobias Regenbrecht]

Am Sonntag, 5. November 2006 12:51 schrieb bsod at hiddenworlds.org:
> We discussed this as a method of trying to eliminate the structural issues
> we are having with the wiki.  It's probably not the best way to go,
> however somehow the issue of the degrading structure needs to be
> addressed.

I think the manual is developing in a not good way. There are IMHO actually 
some serious hurdles for writers, so I find it not attractive to work at 
mediawiki.blender.org.

There should be someone responsible for the start page, and clean this up.

The structure of the manual seems to be complete. The manual pages themself 
are  
1) Out of order -> the navigation is not working properly. E.g. 
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animation_Basics
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/UV_Unwrapping_And_Texturing
There are quite a few of such pages (I found these two just by picking two 
random pages).
2) The format of the pages is not well choosen. E.g.
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Ipo_Curves_and_Keyframes
It's not a pleasure to read (because of multiple reasons), the page width is 
too small.
3) The distinction between manual and tutorial is unclear (at least) and 
handled differently in different sections. Well, it is a difficult decision, 
I'm not sure who should make it (probably the author).
4) The manual has to little examples. The distinction between manual and 
tutorial is artificial and not consistent. The manual is not a pleasure to 
read. IMHO well suited for the manual:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Rigid_Bodies
Many examples, easy to read, many images.
IMHO not well suited for the manual:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Mesh_Skin_Weighting
No examples, no images.
5) Examples has actually been removed from pages. E.g.
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Non_Linear_Animation (I must 
admit, was my own).
The authors have invested some serious work into their pages. It's a very, 
very, very bad idea for someone else to remove massive sections from a page.
6) The version history of some pages have been broken, without linking to the 
originating page. 

I'm sorry, I would have liked the idea to work on the documentation, but I was 
seriously put of. 

Regards
-- 
T. Regenbrecht