[pmwiki-users] More Better Documentation . . .

Sandy sandy at onebit.ca
Tue May 30 12:37:31 CDT 2006


John Rankin wrote:
> On Wednesday, 24 May 2006 10:04 AM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
>>On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 12:08:40AM -0500, Ben Wilson wrote:
>>
>>>I see there is PmWikiFeatures. Still needs to be plastered on the
>>>front page. :-)
>>
>>Ideally I'd like to see a better-reading Features page, and then a
>>link to that from the www.pmwiki.org main page.
>>
>>Pm
>>
>>
> 
> I can take a shot at this over the next few days -- I agree with the
> comments that the software has raced ahead of the documentation and
> it's a good time for a breather so the documentation can catch up.
> 
> Some thoughts:
> 
> 
> - I envisage several "personas", setting out the kinds of things
>   they want to do and how pmwiki makes it easy for them [2]


Yes on personas! Drupal lost my interest because every contributor 
insisted that every user was like him. I'd love a quick decision tree to 
see which persona I am, documentation which meets my needs at that 
moment, and a few links for me to follow as I gain confidence. Give me a 
working recipe. If there's more than one way, say so and tell me how to 
choose. A newbie would often choose differently than a PHP/web expert.


> First question: who are the target audiences for the 
> PmWikiFeatures page? 
> 


I like the fact you pluralized audiences!

Some random ideas:

Someone who wonders whether HTML, a CMS, or another wiki engine is the 
way to go. Probably tried a 20 page site with HTML and a bit of CSS, 
then got frustrated.

Someone who has been disillusioned by other products, both wikis and 
other software. Ease of early use,  customization, flexibility, advanced 
features, upgrading, conflicting visions, abandoned products.

Someone whose only experience with wikis is wikipedia's worst knowledge 
war. (Separate the engine from the government system; set permissions by 
feature and page/group/wiki level.)

Someone who has large gaps in their knowledge and is largely 
self-taught. Likely to rename pmwiki.php because the first book they 
ever read on site building says that's what to do. Uses an FTP client 
but doesn't understand CMOD.

Administrator who routinely gets into the guts of things, assuming 
they're broken, resulting in a non-standard install.








More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list