On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 8:51 AM, janI <j...@apache.org> wrote: > Hi. > > We have just completed the last optimization of wiki.o.o, which means that > it has entered maintenance mode. > > There is one outstanding bugzilla issue, which will be implemented if we > can find a supported solution. > > Now would be a good time to think about the other things we have discussed > earlier: > - Move cwiki to mwiki. > this has been discussed/decided earlier, but might need a positive > decision. > I for one find it very confusing to look in 2 wikis for the same > information (e.g. build instructions) > - Mark outdated paged with category outdated, and symbol on page > A lot of the information in wiki is outdated and superseeded by new > pages, its hard to find the correct info. > If outpdated paged had the category "outdated" it would be easy to change > search to excluded these > - Put categories on all pages, and structure the pages > Due to the very limited maintenance the page structure and catagory usage > seems very random. >
I agree with your appraisal of the current problems. The tricky part of this problem is that we have a small number of old pages that are useful, and a larger numbers that are not really useful anymore. Even if we had volunteers lined up to tag the outdated ones this still leaves the wiki content in a poor state. IMHO it is more than just improving things at the page level. It is the structure as well. And this goes across the wiki and the website, since they are interlinked. One approache, a bold one, that we might consider: Freeze the old wiki and website and start fresh with a new one. Design a new website and wiki, mapping out in advance the visual design, branding, the templates, the taxonomies, etc. Do it at a temporary URL at first. Migrate valuable old content into the new structure. We could have a data-driven approach to prioritize what to migrate, based on a year's worth of data on what current website and wiki pages are consulted most often. This slays all the dragons at once: migrate CWiki to MWiki, combine openoffice.apache.org content into openoffice.org, etc. We can still keep the old stuff, but maybe in a new subdomain, like www.legacy.openoffice.org or wiki.legacy.openoffice.org. We can also at the same time make a more uniform attempt at enabling website translation. -Rob > We can hopefully expect high traffic volume when we release 4.0, which > gives a natural timelimit when the wiki should be streamlined. Unless of > course, the community does not find it embarrasing to have text like: > > "Teams > This section is partly outdated. Visit Apache > OpenOffice<http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/index.html>for > actual information." > > on the front page, highlighting the priority of maintaining the wiki. > > Doing the work needed is too much for one person, it requires a small team. > And based on my experience touching information can generate a lot of > feelings, so the team should preferable contain enough "old" volunteers to > guarantee that the changes are done historically correct. > > I will keep doing the running maintenance of the wiki2 server. > > Rgds > jan I.
