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Topic: Wiki

kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2014-11-14, 22:21

Whats up with the Wiki? Do someone work on it?

The last days i tryed to get an overview over the wiki, but it seems a little bit chaotic. Some pages are blank, other have duplicate informations. The Structure .... The best way to find something is to search for it with the search box above.

The Encyclopedia seems not to work correctly (https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands-website/+bug/1371066). I do not find any link to the encyclopedia at all...

Because i want to give thanks to your great work i could try to update the wiki and give him a little bit more structure.

What i can do is to sort and complete some links. What i couldn't do is to play with django or python and my english isn't so good to tell some storys....

As i was a member of the wikiteam at ubuntuusers.de, i have some experience with working on a wiki. Ok, your WikiSyntax isn't really satisfying, but that wouldn't be a problem. At ubuntuusers.de there was a diskussionpage related to each wikipage. At the Widelands wiki it isn't so. How could the content of a wikipage be discussed? Maybe over your mailing list?

I would start at the page GameManual: I find that the text "Overwiew" is too long and overlaps with the content of the page Description So i would cutting the "overwiew"-text to a really short overview with a link to the discription-page for further information The following topics "Startplaying" and "Links" aren't very descriptive. The first one could be ommited i think.

Maybe the following structure i would implement:

  • Overview (short)
  • Get Widelands (with Link to Download-page)
  • Playing widelands

    • Quickstart
    • Main menu
    • ....
    • FAQ of playing widelands
  • Tribes

    • ....
    • ....
  • Website (help on using)

  • Development

    • ....
    • FAQ technical

and so on.

Would that help you? How to discuss such things?


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Tibor

Joined: 2009-03-23, 23:24
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Posted at: 2014-11-14, 22:53

I agree that wiki would need some reorganization, I am always confused when I need something whether I should go to wiki or development as these two areas overlap a bit - I wanted to find some info about LUA scripting just few moments ago - I somehow found that information, but dont ask me how and where it was..

another example: 'Development -> Documentation' and 'Wiki -> Creating game content' this sound like the same thing

Or 'Wiki-> The widelands project' - this is not clear what should this be (before you open the page)

I personally believe in small steps, so also this should be done this way.

Also 'the game' and 'wiki' seems to overlap a bit.

Also information for players and developers should not be mixed in the same menu, OK, maybe in wiki. Would you start with categories (=menus), or you want to reorganize only submenus?

Maybe you should start with (suggest a) table of menus+submenus, have it discussed, before doing any changes...

Edited: 2014-11-14, 23:09

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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2014-11-15, 04:21

A Wiki cleanup would certainly be welcome.

I think the main menu on top can only be changed by someone who can code. What I find confusing there is that you can also click directly on a main entry rather than selecting something from the pull-down, and it will also give you a distinct page, e.g. https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/Main%20Page/. This is unexpected behaviour, and these pages should only contain a Table of Contents mirroring the menu and nothing else.

The Encyclopedia is in the "The game" menu, but it is also linked up in Wiki -> Game manual.

You also have to be aware that some pages are automatically generated from the game's source code, e.g. the Encyclopedia or the Lua reference. You can recognize these pages by a lack of "Edit" link and the also aren't listed in https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/list/.

Maybe you could start with the list and see if you can build a good Table of Contents somewhere. Note that the pages that are generated automatically aren't listed there.

Edited: 2014-11-15, 04:22

Busy indexing nil values

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2014-11-15, 10:47

I think the main menu on top can only be changed by someone who can code.

Some HTML and CSS would be no problem. But as i understand the Code the whole website is created from scratch with python?

What I find confusing there is that you can also click directly on a main entry rather than selecting something from the pull-down, and it will also give you a distinct page

I am not the only one who is confused about that face-grin.png

Maybe you could start with the list and see if you can build a good Table of Contents somewhere.

Yes i will try that. If am ready with that i could use the Sandbox to store the result of my work.

This work will surely contain some thoughts abut the websitemenu. I agree that "The Game", "Wiki", and "Development" have to be clearly reorganized. e.g. links to Development sites should only be in the "Development" section. Links from other sites to development should be rar and if, this links should point to an approriate main- site.

This would be a lot of work... i think in the end of next week i will post my result.


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SirVer

Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18
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Posted at: 2014-11-15, 12:25

Whats up with the Wiki? Do someone work on it?

No, as far as I know, nobody does. Help (rather: taking ownership and commitment of it) is very welcome.

A short history and some clarification: The Wiki is very old - the first one we had is ~8 years old and all content is still in there somehow. So it has bit rotted quite a bit. Also, at one point we added the encyclopedia which broke when seafaring got introduced. It should be replaced through a good ingame help system, but that is not yet in place. And we have the developer documentation at https://wl.widelands.org/docs/wl/ which is not part of the Wiki, but autoupdated from source code. At one point we lost the homepage due to a HD crash and restored the wiki from google-cache. After that I wanted to go through it and fix every page, I never got around to finish that though. Progress report is here https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/Wiki%20Todo/.

As i was a member of the wikiteam at ubuntuusers.de, i have some experience with working on a wiki. Ok, your WikiSyntax isn't really satisfying, but that wouldn't be a problem. At ubuntuusers.de there was a diskussionpage related to each wikipage. At the Widelands wiki it isn't so. How could the content of a wikipage be discussed? Maybe over your mailing list?

The forums should be the place to discuss anything related to the wiki, I'd say. That includes the whole community.

Some HTML and CSS would be no problem. But as i understand the Code the whole website is created from scratch with python?

Not quite. The whole site is created on the fly by python, that is correct. But the most code is written in templates that are just HTML, they can be changed very quickly if needed. What I hate about the menu is that it does not quite work with mobile devices - you need to tap on the top items and it already loads a page. I can help you getting started with changes those templates if you like.

Thanks for your interest in this work, it will be very beneficial to Widelands.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2014-11-15, 15:48

Not quite. The whole site is created on the fly by python, that is correct. But the most code is written in templates that are just HTML, they can be changed very quickly if needed.

Ah, i see: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands-website/trunk/files/head:/templates/

I can help you getting started with changes those templates if you like.

Because i deleted my launchpad-account (i switched to arch-linux), there should be someone who could make such changes. But first i will try to get an overview over the wiki and discuss the results.

What I hate about the menu is that it does not quite work with mobile devices - you need to tap on the top items and it already loads a page.

What about the solution from GunChleoc:

What I find confusing there is that you can also click directly on a main entry rather than selecting something from the pull-down, and it will also give you a distinct page, e.g. https://wl.widelands.org/wiki/Main%20Page/. This is unexpected behaviour, and these pages should only contain a Table of Contents mirroring the menu and nothing else.

If i finish my review i will make a suggestion for links in the main menu in an extra topic.

How are outdatet wikiartikels handled? Is there an archive to place useless or empty articles? e.g.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2014-11-23, 16:40

I ran through all articles and made a table in the SandBox.

Next week i will try to sort and comment them further.

Some things are really confusing, or difficult:

  1. Some Links are not working correctly as they should do by WikiSyntax
  2. You could not see, where articles are backlinked, from which article(s) are links to the actually seen article set. Which articles have links to this page? This makes it nearly unpossible to make some changes like renaming or merging articles.
  3. The mix of automatic generated articles and those created from users. Automatic creation is surely a good way, but who knows about all these articles and could link them into a user created article?

Fell free to comment my past work face-smile.png


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Tibor

Joined: 2009-03-23, 23:24
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Posted at: 2014-11-23, 20:31

Hi, current menu has 6 items + searchbox, it is not obvious what items will be preserved. You listed only 3 items in Current menu and then it is not obvious where 'other articles' belong to.

I would appreciate if 'tree' structure was obvious - what categories will be on homepage and what subcategories they will have.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2014-11-23, 22:04

Oh, i didn't aware of that you would reorganze the hole Website menu.

I thought it was just for this three menus (The Game, Wiki and Development).

Anyway: The "other" articles are somewhere linked (maybe from Wiki, maybe only from the Forum) or are orphaned.


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Tibor

Joined: 2009-03-23, 23:24
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Posted at: 2014-11-23, 22:19

I talk only for myself - so if we are going to preserve the structure of menu on the mainpage - I am fine with this

Personally, I would welcome to have 'Building Widelands', 'Lua Scripting' and 'BzrPrimer' (perhaps under slightly modified name) listed directly in Development menu

EDIT:

this link here https://wl.widelands.org/docs/ - this page has only one link on it, so it is completely unusefful - can we just get rid of it, or omit it here?

Edited: 2014-11-23, 22:25

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