Hello everybody, I figured it was time I write a post about this. We have our Wiki for documenting functions, actions, tutorials, and everything regarding ENIGMA, so that everything can be found very easily. We also encourage members to edit and contribute as well, if you already have a forum account you can simply log in with the same credentials and begin editing and creating articles.
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Main_Page
Much contribution has come from TheExDeus, polygon, Josh, IsmAvatar, and myself. Lately I have been the driving force behind much of its improvement and documentation, and this can get rather tiresome. I would just like to say I appreciate any and all contributions no matter how small they may be, due to the sheer size of the thing it is very hard for me to get every single function documented. Any help is appreciated.
Hi,
I have some questions about your preferences with Wiki editing:
1. When I want to change a page, do I:
- post the changes in the discussion area first for review, or
- make the change and add a note about it in the discussion area after, or
- just make the change and let people find out from the page history?
2. When I create a new page, should I find similar articles and add links to my page where relevant?
3. Do you find any use in copying helpful information in the forums to the Wiki, so if the question comes up again later we can redirect people to the Wiki?
4. Can Wiki editors who are not admins/bureaucrats categorise articles? (I think so, but just to be sure)
5. Are pedantic edits appreciated or to be avoided? (i.e. going through an article and improving readability without changing it's content)
6. Is there a Wiki page outlining work that needs to be done on the Wiki (e.g. notably missing articles, particularly bad ones that need fixing)?Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but I thought that it would be quicker to ask them here all in one go rather than spreading them over several Wiki pages (Article maintenance, Contribution guidelines etc).
x
Edit: just found the list of 'wanted pages' here: http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Special:WantedPages (http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Special:WantedPages)
1. We tentatively keep an eye on the page history, so no worries. Edit away.
2. That would be preferable, but isn't required. We're not afraid of redlinks; if you use a word that you don't think someone would understand right away, go ahead and link it and it'll be sorted out later.
3. Assuming the Wiki can organize that information better, certainly. A lot of info cycles around the forums frequently that I think would do better on the Wiki, if we knew where to put it.
4. I believe so; you just include the category's template on the page somewhere.
5. Any improvement counts. Just try to be right about the corrections you're making. :P
6. The wanted pages page is generated from redlinks, but it's a decent indicator of work to be done. Part of the issue with the Wiki is that people who understand what needs documented seldom know how to document it, and vice versa. I could tell you anything you want to know about the project, but I have no idea where to begin doing so. For that reason, I encourage people to create stub pages on a given topic to be filled in by developers.
Cheers
Thanks for the answers. I have just two three more for now:
1. How do we rename pages? (I incorrectly created a page called 'Alarm', and realised later it would be more appropriate to call it 'Alarm event')
2. Can we base the wiki of parts of the GM8 help file, or is this a no-go?
3. When creating an mbox template, how do I change its colour? The template I made (http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Template:Course) is the same colour as the one I based it off (http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Template:Wip).
Thanks.
Edit: Rewording, +1 question
1. Just move the page; it'll leave a redirection page, but that's fine, as people can always edit it later if needed. I went ahead and did so.
2. You can't copy and paste anything at all, or we'll be in legal hot water. Unless their help file is, as our Wiki, under the free documentation license, of course (I promise it isn't).
3. I believe mbox is just a certain color. Might check if the mbox template is using something that's easy to copy. Wiki templates confuse me.
Redlinks is not that good indication of progress here, as many pages were automatically generated. For example, all the function pages already exists, but there is still many (I think about half) which are not documented. Just look at bigger sections like: http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Display_and_Window_Functions. None of those functions are documented.
Thanks for the answers. I can't think of any more questions for now.
If I translate an article, should I add the template "{{Languages|PAGE}}" at the end (into both the original and the translated one), like the main page?
@Ben that is what I would do, also something is wrong with that languages template, I copied it directly from MediaWiki but it shows the pages that are not translated as missing I have yet to fix it, but yes that is what you should do so they are easy to find, the official translation is English being that it is the worlds most spoken.
I want to thank all of you who have picked up working on that thing while we are busy with the engine, it really is a must that we provide good organized documentation.
Alright then.
I actually enjoy making this kind of stuff about translating and keeping stuff organized, no worries :p
Heh, I do too I think its an under appreciated attribute of Wiki editors. I'd be working on it too if I wasn't so busy.
I have another doubt; is there any problem if I move "/es" pages to their "normal" names?
Say, I translated "Help" article to spanish, therefore the translated article would be called "Help/es". I want to move it to "Ayuda", which is the spanish transliteration. Can I?
Sure, unless you can think of how that may lead to conflicts down the road, I don't think we should ever make it the practice of titling the English pages with Spanish names, so that seems fine. Well actually, no, because I think that is the method the template uses to find the translations, you may break it like that, you can however use {{DISPLAYTITLE:TitleNane}} to fake the page title, but I believe you should leave the url's alone for the template to work.
I didn't get you :/
EDIT: Ahhhhhhh ok, didn't know about DISPLAYTITLE :3
Ya, I believe the template looks for the page by the same name except with /es or /fr to know that its a translation, otherwise, how would it, you know?
Really appreciate the work you've done, Ben. Thanks a ton!
Yeah... I think it would only break the system for the translated versions of the articles, though. However, I'm using the DISPLAYTITLE template to keep things easier, it works perfect! Thanks ;P
I have a little suggestion, which may be or not be useful.
I know you are using Dropbox as host for the ENIGMA Portable ZIP and how Dropbox works in terms of file hosting, but I wonder if it would be better to have a Wiki template where you store the current link to that zip.
This could be useful mainly to the translation forms of the Installation wiki page; if the official link changed by any means (e.g. deleting-and-re-pasting or renaming the zip file), then the links stored at translations would get broken. But, if the provided link was a global wiki template which only admins could edit (obviously), there'd no problems about this one possible issue (which will only occur for the spanish translation atm, heh).
Sure, someone could edit those links. But it wouldn't be very efficient; it might take some time before this detail gets noticed.
I hope I explained myself.
Templates take time to propagate when edited. My preference would be to have pages requiring that link to instead link users to the correct download page on the Wiki. That said, I'm not opposed to the idea.
I should point out, though, that down the road, we will be adding a feature to this website for serving the latest version of ENIGMA. I'm not sure how far down the road we're talking about, so at this point, do whatever.
Ben, as long as they don't have to go through multiple pages as in your saying just an easy way to embed the link to the pages? Ya that's fine.
I don't speak or read Spanish but I don't have to to notice your kindness and generosity in translating these articles. Well done Ben! :-)
Hi Ben / Robert
Did the template end up being made? If not, I'm happy to implement it.
Cheers.
Don't worry about it right now with me transforming the download/setup pages still, it is fine I got a handle on it :P