[openbeos] Re: The Wiki (or MediaWiki-powered semi-wiki)

Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
On 9/30/06, Michael Phipps <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
It's sort of funny - we had almost these exact conversations back when we
built the last site. How do we arrange all of the data? What menu headers
do we use? What sorts of people will visit the site? :-)

So, it's not an easy topic. ;) 

No. It wasn't then, and it isn't now.

That's why I would propose a menu structure (with quality ascii art!) like
this:

Developer      |    User          |    Community        |   Corporate
---------------+------------------+---------------------+------------
HaikuBook      | Tutorials        | Forums              | About Us
Tutorials      | Users Guide      | Links               | Donate
Build Fact.    | HW Compatibility | Bug Tracker         | Contact Us
Code Tutor'l   | Newsletters      | Banners/Buttons     | Marketing
Code Guideln   | FAQ              | Associated Projects |


I have the impression that this step only introduces an improvement
for developers, but it won't change a lot for end-users. I think we
can achieve the same by adding a "Development" menu tree to the
navigation block (where you have "logout", etc.) or by adding an extra
menu block for development links (always visible).

Not at all. What the proposed structure does is a) reduce the top level menus. Less clutter. Secondly, it hides EVERYTHING to do with development from end users. That is a good thing.

I absolutely hate the two wannabe tree views that are on the site right now. The clutter up the page terribly, IMHO. Menus are the best way to go, again, IMHO. We need to remember that this is NOT plonetest any more. We should NOT be making changes arbitrarily to the structure of the site without talking about it.

I've setup a similar menu structure, so we can directly compare the
two navigation schemes. BTW, for the final site we should probably
have the navigation block on the left and "Similar entries", etc. on
the right, so the navtree is more accessible.

Ugh. I hate that. Really. Really. Hate that. Navigating our site should not be that hard. If we need nav trees, I think we need to rethink the site design altogether. That is just SO way too crowded. Even with only one of those, I think that it would be way too crowded. Haiku is about minimalism. Think about the zen of the tabs; only use as much as you need. Choices to see everywhere I could possibly go from where I am are bad.

User login, for example, is bad, IMHO. We could make it a "onmouseover div" style thing. We shouldn't show it all the time. It is ugly in a major way.

I still don't quite see why we would want a wiki. We could easily add a
tips section under user or community that people could submit to.


How can people submit questions without answers, then? Should we have
create a "Put your questions here." page and use comments to ask and
answer questions (and later move interesting, answered questions to a
separate page)? Is that open enough? A wiki would at least allow for
everyone to directly make these edits.

Forums are a better choice than wiki's, IMHO. Or, better yet, email them to a list where answers can be officially generated and placed in the FAQs if appropriate. Wikis are really a poor choice for that sort of thing because it would require knowledgeable people to troll them for questions. Forums are designed for that sort of threaded structure.

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