About the new CrunchBang website (Page 2 of 2)

Setting a flag is super easy, and yes, it is not overly intensive. However, looping through a table to read the flags for each topic/post can be quite intensive.

I agree that it is something to be looked at, but to be honest, it is not super-high on the agenda at the moment. If possible, I would like to try and avoid getting bogged down in details at this stage

Hey Larry I am hoping that there will be plenty of opportunities to help with improved documentation. As you are aware, good documentation can be the key to a successful project and this is something I would like the new site to excel at.

As stated, it is still early days for the new site, but it would be great to get your input and help as and when parts of the site go live. Thanks for the support!

OOps there is an active topics right next to the new posts button.  It is handy if your new post search gets reset.

Happy to volunteer to help with things like ploughing though "how to" threads and wiki entries triaging them as OK/need fiving/obsolete... stuff like that, or anything else within my abilities.

...since most of the documentation was community built, it would make sense for the community to help sort it out, leaving Philip free to focus on the architecture. Amongst all the randomness there's a mountain of valuable stuff in there that shouldn't be allowed to get lost.

Last edited by johnraff (2012-01-25 16:28:22)

I'd guess a read-only "archive" section would be the way to go, maybe for threads referring to pre-Debian Crunchbang? Let's not go actually deleting stuff. It's amazing how the week after you delete a load of obsolete files you discover you'd like another look at one of them...

Then there's the old wiki pages. They're a bit different from forum threads because even the obsolete ones could be edited and brought up to date in some cases. Others which are based on outdated software would go into another archive I suppose.

3 Suggestions:

Maybe 3 or 4 people could go through the wiki quickly marking pages as 1)Currently useful, 2)Need editing, 3)Obsolete or 4)"I'm not qualified to have an opinion on this". Ones that everyone agreed on could be dealt with quickly, a list made of the difficult cases and volunteers called for to help sort them out.

Perhaps the forum "How To" threads should be split off from the "Tips Tricks and Scripts"?

Ultimately, how about if  each wiki page was linked to a thread in that forum "How To" section? New threads could be made for existing wiki pages, and the OPs of existing forum HowTos could be encouraged to make a new wiki page. The idea being that the wiki is where you go to get the best word on how to do something, and the forum thread is for hammering out issues that come up.

@johnraff

Agreed.  I am all in on this one. 

I also wonder if it is feasible to split the languages out into separate pages.  I find people posting to the wiki site and when I hit the link it is in Spanish.  Not a big deal but it is hard to sort through all that is on the Wiki to find what you are looking for with so many similar choices.

I also like the idea of splitting off the How To's into an area of their own..  On the Quick Reference Page, I started to do that and found if I split out all the How To's in to their own area, it would make Anonymous Super Thread a totally different one.  There is that many How To's there, I believe the count is 58

I am ready to begin this at anytime.

Basically, I guess triaging the wiki pages could start any time - one way of doing it could be to have a space at the top or bottom of each page where people could leave a signed assessment, eg "johnraff - obsolete" (limited choice of "obsolete", "OK" and "needs work", also the option of writing nothing). So it would be quick to do, and quite transparent what was going on.

Say, an appeal went out for people to have a look and leave their assessments (either a small group, or alternatively ask everyone to help), and after a week or two it might be possible to mark a load of pages (those where everyone agreed) with a pre-made bit of code to paste in that puts a banner at the top saying "This content is now outdated" or whatever, prior to actually moving them to another folder sometime later. "Approved" pages could also be marked "OK" or something. That would leave 1) pages where not everyone had the same opinion, and 2) pages which would be fine with a little editing or extra content: ie pages which need more time spent on them. If we're lucky, that list might be short...

NOTHING SHOULD BE DELETED - it's easy to remove an addition, but impossible to put back a deletion.

Anyway, we shouldn't do anything till we hear what Phillip thinks about it.

I will help as much as I can. As S11 said.."just point me in the right direction"

^ The Google custom search here on the top right works like a charm and better than the forum search.

The forum search on the left lets you limit results to one category, but to be able to search one thread only would be nice sometimes.