[pmwiki-users] PmWiki forum...

[The Editor]

On 3/18/07, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > 5) The idea a wiki is better than a forum is also nonsense.  [...]
> >
> > Strong words there!  I dare you to justify this bald assertion.
> > You say that we haven't proven that the mailing list is good, well, you
> > haven't proven in any way that a forum is good.
>
> Indeed, Dan has made some strong assertions here (many of which
> I also find unsupported).

Apologies again for not stating myself as clearly as I intended.  I
only meant a Forum set up on a wiki could be designed to still have
all the advantages of a Wiki. I'm all for wiki's!

And as Pm's solutions shows, the best approach is indeed something
that combines the advantages of something more forum-like (structuring
information) with the advantages of a wiki (open editing).  I think
Pm's plan is great--much better than my original quick suggestion, for
it does just that.  Plus, it builds on what we already have in the
Cookbook, so it comes already populated with information.  Brilliant!

> First I need to acknowledge a quick "Thank you!" to Dan
> for the time he put into the beta PmWiki forum.  Although I
> don't think I'll use the ZAPforum approach that he's prototyped,
> seeing it in action did finally cause me to see a path through
> this mess.  So Dan gets a lot of credit for pushing hard
> enough to get us to a solution on this.

No problem with not using it.  Your solution is much better.  And I
will be using something very much like it on my site here shortly, so
none of the effort was wasted.

> Dan's topic list is a reasonable start.  But there's more...

I'd suggest you also add a topic/pagelist for 1) recently released
recipes (new recipe pages) and 2) recent upgrades (somehow linked to
when a script is uploaded), 3) a favorites topic (if we can settle on
some kind of voting system (or perhaps based on # of downloads?).
Others may be able to think of others.

Also, since I seem to recall categories can be nested, we could
perhaps have subcategories if desired.

And lastly, Skins could be inserted as a category just to make the
cookbook a bit more comprehensive.  Just some thoughts.

> But a few minutes later the answers came like lightning:
>
> 1.  Oops!  We **can** have a sidebar on pmwiki.org with topics
>     like those on Dan's forum site!  Just because the main sidebar
>     on pmwiki.org needs a certain structure doesn't mean the
>     Cookbook needs to have that same structure also.  The Cookbook
>     group can (and should) have its own specialized sidebar, with
>     topics organizing the recipes.  The recipes then handle the
>     load of presenting questions and answers.

Yes, this shares the load of maintaining things on recipe writers.
And to drop a non functional recipe, just remove the category tag...

> 6.  Since many of the recipe pages already have a "Questions answered
>     by this recipe" section, a little bit of structure added to
>     those sections would make it possible to use a pagelist to
>     show the questions answered by the recipes within each topic.
>     This makes it look more like a FAQ type of document.

How would you deal with multiple questons on a recipe page?  Maybe an
#begin#end include?  Some recipes answer several questions...

> 7.  We then return to my earlier idea to have a form that makes it
>     easy for people to post questions as new pages in the cookbook.
>     The form would appear on the various topic pages, and would
>     automatically create a new page containing the question, as well
>     as the associated topic tag and an [[!AnswerMe]] tag that
>     indicates the question needs an answer.  The [[!AnswerMe]]
>     tag makes it easy to locate any questions that haven't
>     ben resolved (for those of us who like to do such things).

Also, questions could be automatically posted to the PmWiki mailing
list so folks can be alerted to the new questions, discuss the
question, and when there's a final solution, it can be posted to the
cookbook page.

> This solves a *lot* of problems at once...

> - The Cookbook becomes the single repository for any information
>   and tips that don't quite fit into the core documentation.  It
>   returns cookbook to it's original purpose of being the place
>   to provide a variety of answers about PmWiki configuration,
>   and not just a place for recipes.

Yes great idea! That's what makes this solution so brilliant!  Plus I
don't have to worry about trying to maintain another site!  :)

> - It gives us a way to quickly organize and reorganize questions
>   and topics as needed into more appropriate structures.

> - Unanswered questions are easy to locate, and they quickly become
>   "answer recipes" that document how to solve a given problem
>   for whoever comes by later with a similar question.
>
> - Background discussion and commentary for each answer recipe
>   can be easily stored in an associated '-Talk' page for the
>   recipe.
>
> I like it.  I like it a lot.  Based on this I will probably start
> re-organizing the Cookbook and the PmWiki.Questions page along
> these lines over the next couple of days.  Once I get the basic
> structures in place, others can of course help with refactoring
> and migrating information and recipes to where they belong.

Can't wait Pm.  I think it will be a huge improvement.  I'd also
suggest we drop the FAQ link or have it point to the cookbook home
page (topic list)...

Cheers,
Dan