[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