[Bf-docboard] an alternative to restricting access

[Tobias Regenbrecht]

On Monday, 06. Nov. 2006 bsod at hiddenworlds.org wrote:

... Restricting access to the wiki ...
> As I mentioned in my last post, this issue is not so much problematic
> contributions, it's the continual pollution of the article structure.  At
> some point this needs to be addressed, or all the time that this group of
> editors have is going to be spent on rearranging the wiki structure.

I'm right now only concentrating on the manual, please appologize that. There 
may be other sections that need other rules.

There is probably a very little number of authors that will actually create 
new pages in the manual. The structure needs to be discussed, but basically 
let the authors do their work. Since one can assume that they want to deliver 
good work, and know their own writing best, they are the ones that should 
decide about the structure of their sections. The manual doesn't have to be 
monolithic.

To discuss various topics in a mailing list or in IRC is highly problematic. 
The discussion should take place in the wiki itself. 

This is from the style guide:
"The logical subdivision of Core documentation is dictated by the 
Documentation Board. No new pages are expected to be added except after 
approval." 

Who is the documentation board? How can one address them? How long will it 
take? How to solve dissents?

> Unfortunately, Blenderwiki will not operate like wikipedia.  The ideals of
> a wiki don't stand up so well in a small userbase.  So whilst there may be
> a dedicated team of editors, we will never have the continual upkeep that
> something like wikipedia has.
Something as big as the manual needs continuous work for several months or 
even years. It will attract people if they have a relatively high amount of 
freedom and appreciation. But it will attract only few people, because it's a 
lot of work. All wikibooks projects have only a few main writers. If you 
loose one or two of them, it's a heavy loss. The Blender documentation is 
attractive because Blender has such a high and dedicated user base, so there 
may be quite a few contributors. 

> I'm really not sure that complete free access is a good idea,  however 
> simply reviewing the Recent Changes list is probably not going to work
> simply because everytime a page is saved a new entry is made in the Recent
> Changes menu. 
It works quite well at wikibooks, but the main authors are granted some more 
rights from the community (just informaly). So a main author may rearrange 
pages - not because he is appointed to do so, but because he has shown that 
he has enough overview. It poses a risk though - you may drive someone off 
the project, so it is normally made very carefully and only after asking 
politely.


> Ultimately the biggest problem we have is that new people are not familiar
> with the structure and namespace layout, and they don't read the writing
> instructions, especially if they are already familiar with mediawiki, and
> I feel this is something we need to address.
But these people normally don't create new pages.

Take a look at http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual
1 edit in Oktober
10 edits in August by 4 different users.

> I've actually started implementing this plan.  I've created a template
> that can be embedded with {{Incomplete}} notation which puts a small
> warning at the top of the page saying that it's up for review and adds it
> to the Review category.  
I think it's also necessary to indicate the status of pages in the table of 
contents, but this category thing is a good idea.

> > What about prioritizing that To Do list?  How about this: any wiki
> > reader could check the To Do page, and give a To Do item a bump up in
> > priority (I need info about Pivot Points, but it's near the end of the
> > list! *bump*).  I'm not sure what kind of voting functionality the wiki
> > has to implement this.  But if we had something along these lines, the
> > user community would determine what is important to write, and we
> > writers can better focus our efforts.
Probably not a good way to work. Would you really like to write about topics 
you are not personally interested in and don't have in depth knowledge about 
it, just because someone else wants it? (But may be a usefull feature for 
someone...)

With kind regards
-- 
T. Regenbrecht