Wiki Cleanup

Much work has gone into our documentation, and with the migration over to wiki.diasporafoundation.org, we can now focus on clearing up any duplicates of our docs.


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Proposal: Clear GitHub Wiki

The GitHub wiki has some outdated documentation in it. As we have an official wiki now, I think it is important that we systematically close down duplicate sources of documentation, so as to avoid creating confusion.

This means clearing out the GH wiki, and instead providing a link to our official source of information.


Outcome: N/A

Votes:

  • Yes: 5
  • Abstain: 0
  • No: 0
  • Block: 0

Note: This proposal was imported from Loomio. Vote details, some comments and metadata were not imported. Click here to view the proposal with all details on Loomio.

first, we need to make sure everything has been transferred (I’m guessing it already was, but it’s always good to be sure)

also, I suggest inserting links to the new wiki in every article on github, and leaving the contents there for a little while longer. then, after a “transition period” we can remove it entirely.

I think that sounds perfectly reasonable. It wouldn’t be that hard to just dig through each of the articles, and put a disclaimer with a link at the top of the page that links to its equivalent entry on the new wiki. That way, we can figure out what’s missing in one fell swoop.

hint hint
http://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Category:Github_transfer_done

There’s a lot content that isn’t bad but very aged or irrelevant. How about archiving the wiki under diaspora/oldwiki?

Would it be worth using a two-step process for safety:

  1. Person A transfers a page to the new wiki (editing as they go for out-of-date content etc) and then marking that page in Github ‘Transferred to [new URL]’,
  2. Then someone else checks the link, checking that the new content is correct and then deleting the page in Github?

So if you see a page in Github which is not so marked, you check whether there is yet an equivalent page in the new wiki, and if not, transfer it there, checking and editing it in the process, and then mark the page as transferred. If you see a page which is marked as transferred, check the link and if you’re happy the page has been transferred correctly, delete it.

Or is this overkill?

@seantilleycommunit , I still find I’m unable to create new pages in the wiki. Can you help me get started there? I’m probably missing something blindingly obvious. And yes, I am logged in when I’m trying.

I’ve taken the first page on the ‘to-do’ list and have edited, updated and added to it, and changed the markup to match the MediaWiki examples.

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Become-a-Contributor

If you can enable me to create new pages in the new wiki, I’ll transfer it.

@Goob Yes, I think that’s overkill. We have to refurbish a large quantity anyway so nothing gained in slowing down the migration with that.

To create a new page simply visit it, i.e. http://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Become_a_contributor and click ‘Create’ at the top right.

Ah right, so you have to go to a non-existent URL first and then click ‘Create’. Thanks.

MediaWiki has the most stupid way of creating new pages for sure :frowning:

You can also just run a search for a page name that doesn’t exist, which gives an option to create it.

I do agree, it is a little silly.

I received the following mail today:

Hi!

Today I tried to visit to wiki.diasporafoundation.org, but Avast antivirus blocked it. Maybe that site is infected by any virus. I do not know who maintains the site, so just informed you.


Artyom Petrenkov

Thanks, I’ll look into it.

It is worth noting that Avast occasionally registers false positives on websites. Nevertheless, after a scan, everything comes up clean from my end.

Alright, the rough transfer should be done: http://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Category:Github_transfer_done

So what now? Leave the Github wiki in place with the banners? Replace all pages with just the banners? Replace all pages with a uniform “The wiki moved to wiki.diasporafoundation.org” message? Push the history to diaspora/oldwiki to rescue the not transfer worthy documents? At least we (@seantilleycommunit) should turn the “Restrict edits to Collaborators only” flag in the repository settings on now, I think.

Now it’s time to enter regular wiki maintenance: Find outdated pages or ones that need some love and update them. Find duplicate/similar content and merge the pages. Find very long articles about distinct subjects that really should be two articles, especially if they got more than one target audience. Find new outdated content and flag it. Find obsolete pages and propose deletion. Participate in the discussions. Shape out the categories, by recategorizing the pages and describing them on their category page. Maybe you see the need for a new category? Is a category just boilerplate? And so on and so on.

We should also pay some special attention to all pages in http://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Category:Github_transfer_done now. Maybe just remove them from the category if they are in a good shape?

I think the best course of action would be to scan over what’s been transferred over. If it’s all in a good enough shape, I’d be fine with just deleting the content of the GitHub wiki, and instead only providing the link to the official one. If it’s not in good-enough shape, I’m happy to help improve the state of wiki entries.

Regardless of what we choose to do with the GitHub wiki, I’ve set it to collaborators only, as you’ve suggested. :slight_smile:

I think all we need to do is confirm that the content of the Github wiki has accurately been transferred to the new wiki, and then the Github wiki can be deleted. We can then work on updating, improving and expanding the new wiki.

I’ve been looking at some of the outdated and ‘maintenance’ entries, and am finding there’s little I’m able to add to them, because of my lack of technical knowledge. I’ll see what else I can do, though.

So, looking at http://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Special:AllPages we need a guideline on the casing of article names. I don’t want to look up everytime if it’s “How we communicate”, “How we Communicate” or “How We Communicate”. I have no preference for either, but it needs to be consistent. Any general objections or should I put up a vote?

I’d been thinking about that as well, Jonne. As an ex-editor, it was irritating me. My personal preference is strongly for capitalisation of the first word only, i.e. from your examples, ‘How we communicate’. Lots of capitals are ugly on the eye and tend to jerk the flow of reading. (Of course, words such as Diaspora would always take a capital.)

I didn’t want to start changing things however as it was my opinion, but it would be good to have an agreed standard. Whether we need a vote or not, I’m not sure - let’s see if we can get agreement on one form without it.

I’m for capital on the first word only - who agrees? Who disagrees?

I could try to dig up or produce a draft ‘house style’ which could be put on the wiki so that prospective editors could check it so they know how we want things styled in general.