[pmwiki-users] Re: Reader docs (Was: audiences revisited or revised ???)

chr at home.se chr at home.se
Fri Aug 5 16:37:07 CDT 2005


On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Radu wrote:

> http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WikiElements

I looked at your page and to me it seems like a list of terminology,
explaining different concepts and so on. This is fine as a reference, but
I wonder if it isn't too compact for a basic reader? Did you indend it for 
all kinds of readers?


As for topics suitable to readers:

> >* What is a category and how do I "use" it?
> 
> I consider this an Author topic; readers see tham any other link.

I disagree. I think the reader could benefit from knowing a bit about the 
concept of categories - that pages are sometimes grouped together, and 
that clicking on something like

	Category: Forms, Links

will bring you to this strange and scary page in the group Category/ that 
will simply list all the other pages that have been marked as belonging to 
this category. 

In addition, it should be very useful to go to Category.Category just in
order to see a list of the existing categories! If the reader doesn't know 
about this possibility, why would he use it?

> >* How can I find uploaded files?
> 
> readers? by clicking the links :)

I do think this is a valid question. A reader might well want to download 
a file, but how does he go about finding that file? (Assuming the link 
isn't staring him in the face of course :-)

We could say something about how the Upload-link lists all the uploaded 
files for the current group for instance.

> >* How to navigate the wiki (sidebar etc)
> 
> I considered addressing that, but it seems just plain old surfing to 
> me. So I decided against it.

I partially agree with you here. We should however at least mention 
something along the lines of 

	... the thing on the left is called a sidebar and usually contains 
	links to other pages in the site. See PmWiki.AboutSideBar for more 
	details.

As I see it, the sidebar is an important part of how to navigate and use a 
wiki.

Katherine wrote:
>> * What is a wiki
>> * What is a wiki trail? (prev page, trail index, next page)
>> * What is a category and how do I "use" it?
>> * How are pages organized? (Pages are organized on groups)
>> * How can I see the history of a page?
>> * How can I find uploaded files?
>> * How do I search for a specific page?
>> * How to navigate the wiki (sidebar etc)
>> * Layout of a wiki page (sidebar, search field, ... other stuff?)
>
> Maybe something on the difference between a group, a category, a place
> on a wiki trail, a breadcrumb -- all navigational stuff How to go
> directly to a page via an URL - not implicit really

Perhaps we should mention AllRecentChanges and AllRecentUploads, as well 
as RecentChanges and RecentUploads. A reader might well be interested to 
know what has changed lately.

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr








More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list