[pmwiki-users] Does this list inhibit development of good documentation?

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 11:18:17PM +0000, Keith Edmunds wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 10:07:03 +1100
> Kathryn Andersen <kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org> wrote:
> 
> > Lovely idea -- but part of the difficulty is in trying to figure out
> > what the "relevant place" *is*.

> The problem, I think, is that wikis use themselves to document (quote
> dogfood mantra), which is great if you know what it is you're trying to
> find out (if you see what I mean). What I wanted, however, was the
> equivalent of a reference manual that I could read from start to finish.
> No, I wouldn't remember all the detail, but I would remember what was in
> there, so that subsequently I could lookup the detail of how to accomplish
> a given task.
> 
> The most frustrating thing with pmWiki is that it is very powerful, but
> there is no ONE place to go to find the detail. Instead there are many
> pages of information, each of which cross-reference others (in wiki
> style). At the start, we just want to read it linearly.

I thought that PmWiki/DocumentationIndex was a good place to start.
At least, I found it useful myself.  Where does it fall down?

But while Cookbook/Cookbook is *supposed* to be the equivalent to the
PmWiki/DocumentationIndex for recipes, many people don't add their
new recipes to that page, either because they're scared off because the
page has a password (which is "quick", btw), or because they don't see
the need.

Kathryn Andersen
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