[pmwiki-users] RFC: PITS 00701 -- WikiFarm confusion

[Bellave Jayaram]

I mean user in the sense of author and visitor (the author could be a wiki
administrator as well). Sure, even here, one can make the argument that
author and visitor documentation should be separate but at least a (two
part) distinction between (author and visitor) and (system admin, wiki
admin, field admin, developer) documentation would help a lot.

Jayaram

PS : I have created some pages in the PmWiki group and am working on some
ideas in this area - it is not ready for review yet but when it is, I will
send a mail.

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick R. Michaud [mailto:pmichaud at pobox.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 7:08 PM
To: Bellave Jayaram
Cc: 'Joachim Durchholz'; pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
Subject: Re: [pmwiki-users] RFC: PITS 00701 -- WikiFarm confusion

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 02:41:26PM -0700, Bellave Jayaram wrote:
> Most of the developer and administration documentation should be separated
> from end user documentation. This is one of the frustrating things about
the
> present PmWiki site. The end user documentation should only contain the
> basic concepts, simple tasks and references relating to authentication,
> editing, groups, markups, searching, trails and publishing. I am willing
to
> bet that only about 10% (if that) of PmWiki users even care about Recipes
> and how to configure things. Only if the question is still not answered
with
> that documentation would anyone need to refer to the numerous pages on
> pmwiki.org that are only relevant to developers and admins.

Could I get you to clarify what group the word "users" is supposed
to indicate in the above sentence?

Pm


P.S.: For those who haven't been exposed to my previous rants on the
topic:  I almost always find the word "user" confusing and frustrating
because it's too generic a term.  In PmWiki's case the word "user"
could refer to an author, a wiki admin, a visitor, a system administrator,
or a field admin, and possibly more.

As an extreme example, as a professor I was once asked to
review a Master's thesis where the student had written a paragraph
that had four instances of the word "user" in it, and each instance
"user" actually referring to a different person (a student, a teacher,
a system administrator, and a programmer).

Pm