Intro - some thought about the wiki translations

haduong at centre-cired.fr haduong at centre-cired.fr
Tue Sep 2 07:32:00 CEST 2008


Hi Frank,

  Welcome to the documentation team.

  What is happening is that we are doing everything we can to turn a big
disorganized pile of words into a useful (and hopefully someday good
looking) reference site. Things have improved a lot already, but the
categorization is still being redone (I think a hierarchical approach
cannot work well, but that's just me). Meanwhile, we are also learning
how to use Wikimedia (what are templates, namespaces, subpages, how to
archive properly etc...) and writing our own guidelines. So it's still
starting, you are not late to the party.

  We have not done much on the social organization side. Just add our name to
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Wiki_Maintainers . To the best of my
knowledge, we have not anything formal and none of the community members
has elevated priviledges. Sysops (wiki administrators) are Brenda
(coolcat) and Michael S. both from Openmoko
http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=Special%3AListusers&username=&group=sysop&limit=50
, which means only they can lock or delete pages.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Administrators

  Traditionally we have left it to Brenda to update the navigation bar
templates, after discussing modifications here. So how precisely do you
suggest to make it better ?

  As for the big level structure, so far we have been thinking about how
to clearly separate user and developper oriented pages, with a half
conclusion that we should categorize better (I am not sure how, though.
Must check the guidelines.). I think that the "Key pages" navigation box
can potentially give a multi-page narrative story, or structure chapters
if you prefer.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Om_2008.8
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FreeRunner_Overview

  I agree that we have too many navigation boxes. IMHO the three on the
left column should be revised to two, but see above about the left
navigation. I also think that having "Table of content" + "Key pages" +
"Language chooser" + the usual wiki header stuff is bad, but I don't
have time to propose and implement a better page layout. If you want
ideas on what to do, I would say that giving a more uniform look to all
the "Key pages on Om 2008.8" would be an easy, significant and visible
contribution.

  As for translation, we have been too busy with content to think about
it. I guess we are waiting for the translators to team up themselves and
take charge. Here is another exciting task for you !

  Replacing "Main page" with something else is technically beyond the
power of wiki editors.

Yours,
Minh



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