[pmwiki-users] User level for this forum? a cry for help (was Blogging support?)

Ben Wilson dausha at gmail.com
Thu Aug 17 02:02:28 CDT 2006


Honestly, I see this forum as a mixed bag of the entire community.
There are a few of us who are programmers and recipe writers. There
are some who are system administrators---or only those who run a few
wiki sites. However, that is not the sole audience---we just tend to
be more talkative.

I know that Pm encourages those new to PmWiki to fire away. A lot of
us in the community will do our best to help out, too. For my own
part, I realize I'm not usually the best fellow to answer the
questions. I either have a hard time understanding the problem or
communicating a solution.

>From the Frapper, it appears that fully half of the PmWiki community
are non-native English speakers. I know that gets in the way
sometimes, too--again especially from me since I tend to ramble on.

As far as incomplete documentation, I know the Community is interested
in fleshing them out as much as possible to help ease the transition
from neophyte to expert. So, if you see an omission, please speak up
(as you have), or write something up.

On 8/17/06, mike moller <mike.moller at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi IchBin
> I can relate to your frustrations but I think we "PmWiki newbies" and "early
> users" have to be aware that this forum seems to mainly cater to  the
> interests of Systems Administrators for PmWikis, with many of the active
> participants having a great deal of experience of filling those sorts of
> roles.
>
> The product itself is great and the support be the principal author is
> excellent (thank you PM for your committment) couple that with the
> contributions of other recipe authors and we have a really top notch support
> community.
>
> Having said that there is a real gap for newcomers, especially if they are
> having to climb a mixed learning curve of PmWiki, PHP and maybe a web server
> as well. We all experience difficulties with the "how do I do ...?" type
> questions when all that is needed is really a pretty trivial piece of basis
> usage info. One really glaring problem is the absence of a few pages of
> technical overview docs to relate the pieces of the jigsaw to each other at
> a pretty elementary level. eg
> a) the flow from pmwiki.php through the other distributed scripts?
> b) how do the .tmpl files get into the act?
> c) where do .css files fit in?
> d) how do all the above come together to generate a page of html?
>  e) what are the opportunities for personalised mods/extensions?
> f) how do these hang together with the standard distro bits?
> g) the roles and limitations of config.php?
> h) custom markups?
> i) how to define variables and pass their values among the php scripts?
> j) how to expose and test those same variables within wiki page markups?
>
> Okay guy's it's all pretty basic tech user guide stuff, it won't require
> much volume to get the needed info across to technically literate newbies,
> but it sure wastes an enormous amount of time and creates
> confusions/frustrations.
>
> Unfortunately the people who need this stuff haven't got the knowledge (yet
> :-) to write it. For instance anything I might try to put together on the
> basis of my present knowledge would likely be mistaken, confused and
> incomplete.  ( strikeout likely and read certainly :-)
>
> There's a real need here guy's - how about a short sharp project for those
> with the knowledge to contribute a few "primer" level documents?
>
> Sound to me like IchBin is crying out for some of it and I know I could do
> with it
> --
> Mike Moller
> Lallybroch Alpacas
> New Zealand
> www.lallybroch.co.nz
>
>
>
>
>
> On 8/17/06, IchBin <weconsul at ptd.net> wrote:
>  ... Even though I do not have any recipe to contribute to this wiki. It
> > seems that this newsgroup is all about. I thought that this group was
> > for users and not just developers of recipes for PmWiki. I am really
> > happy that Blogging will be included for PmWiki.  I am not sure what to
> > do about the simple questions, I have had in the past, about the current
> > recipes that are now apart of PmWiki now. I seem to be somewhat
> > discouraged by no response by my questions on current recipes. Unlike
> > other newsgroups like Java and PHP where I always have some one to
> > respond to a question.
> >
>
> > --
> > Thanks in Advance...
> > IchBin, Pocono Lake, Pa, USA              http://weconsultants.phpnet.us
> > 'If there is one, Knowledge is the "Fountain of Youth"'
> > -William E. Taylor,  Regular Guy (1952-)
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > pmwiki-users mailing list
> > pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> > http://host.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
> >
>
>
>
>
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>


-- 
Ben Wilson
"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man." HDT




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