[pmwiki-users] User Documentation

The Editor editor at fast.st
Thu Mar 16 16:20:07 CST 2006


kjettil wrote these words a while back and I thought they were too
good to archive, so I made a note to comment on them when I got a
chance.

> 1 - 'end user' - for which a lot is on a too complex level (for an
> 'end user' who is supposed to be w/o any knowledge of html, etc). With
> 'end user' I here mean a person who will contribute/author the texts.
> 2 - 'unexperienced administrator' - who is only interested in setting
> up site(s) using one of the well tested skins. With 'unexperienced' I
> mean someone almost w/o or with very little knowledge of html, css
> (and php).
> 3 - 'experienced administrator' - who knows html, css and php and
> intends to/needs to develop custom skins, markup, functions, etc.

While we may have these different levels of documentation scattered
here and there, and sometimes labeled with the little yellow box as to
the audience, I would find it more helpful to completely separate the
three levels, even perhaps to the degree of completely different
groups.

Why?  Well suppost I set up a wiki and I want to give 5 people their
own sections to work on and edit, or all work together on some area. 
I should be able to just give them the help files that will be most
useful to them (level one).  I'm planning to write my own
documentation for my members along these lines. I don't even want them
knowing all the other things they could do to mess up a site.

Suppose I were a webmaster and I was reselling little mini websites
(dare I say field wikis?).  Perhaps to reasonably computer savvy
people who wanted their own website, but didn't want all the headaches
the rest of us thrive on.  They should have a section for their needs.
 Protected from any authors they allow on to their sites.

And then of course those actually doing the coding, administrating,
webmastering, whatever, need everything we can get.  Separating the
documentation into separate groups allows us to control who has access
to what.  References to lower level documentation could all be linked
to from the higher level documentation.  And as the search function
would help you to find anything you have authorization to read,
separating them is a minor or trivial problem.  Very useful!

Caveman




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