[pmwiki-users] Proposal: Recipe Structure Change

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 09:26:35AM -0500, Ben Wilson wrote:
> On 5/23/06, Tegan Dowling <tmdowling at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is where the PageTableOfContents recipe would really be useful.
> 
> I agree, a TOC when there are more than two top-level headings is my standard.
> 
> > Keeping all content on one page does have real advantages to "shoppers"
> > (like seeing that there are problems with a recipe that doesn't live up to
> > its "marketing", and isn't ready for general use)
> 
> This is where the "Community Review" section and the product summary
> fits in. 

I proposed having some form of "rating system" for Cookbook recipes
and the community response seemed to be that it was more trouble than
it's worth.  (Having "ratings" in a designated feedback section of a recipe,
where the rating can be accompanied by comments explaining the rating,
is probably worthwhile however.)

> The "Community Review" is a section where people actually _rate_ the
> utility of a recipe. Rather than bog down into a sea of swirling
> comments and nested responses, the visitor sees: (Rating) (Signature
> w/ Date) (Review):
> 
>    [+'''* * *'''+] Ben Wilson May 23, 09:01. Res ipsum loquiter, sed
> quid in inferno decit.
>    5 of 6 people found this review helpful.
>    ''This review refers to version 1.0''

But --please-- if we do this, let's come up with a better markup
than [+'''* * *'''+].  Even just "Rating:***" or "(Rating ***)"
would be better.


> I am saying that all recipes should adopt
> this approach to promote uniformity and predictability. 

I agree that it's good to have a uniform basis to work from.
I disagree with a statement that seems to imply that "all" recipes
should have to use that format.  Sometimes there are recipes or
situations where the standard format may not be the most appropriate
or understandable one.  (In short, I dislike "one-size-fits-all"
approaches.)

> Notice in this discussion itself the focus has been placed on the more
> confrontational issue--that of splitting a page into two or three
> related pages. There has been nothing said on the review. That's
> because the discussion is meant to cover all the bases--but people
> only see one. [...]

Not at all.  I didn't comment on the review aspect of the original
post because review had already been extensively discussed back in 
March [1,2], and because when writing my response I only had enough 
time to comment on the part that concerned me the most.

It doesn't bother me to have separate '-Review' pages for recipes,
although many will be confused by the differences between '-Comments'
and '-Review'.

> The Google Map API main page is three printed pages. The discussion
> section is six printed pages, fewer if I redacted the past version
> comments, then it would be fewer, but as this is a new recipe that
> would be unfair. I believe having all nine pages on one page would be
> too distracting.

I don't disagree; for this recipe having it spread out across multiple
pages makes sense.  But that doesn't mean all recipes should do it.

Pm

[1]: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user/23871
[2]: http://www.pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2006-March/024215.html