[TYPO3-typo3org] [TYPO3-hci] Kickoff: TYPO3 4.1 (suggestions)

Matthew Manderson matthew at manderson.co.uk
Sun Sep 17 10:23:38 CEST 2006


Erik Thanks again. I hope you don't mind having this conversation?

> I think Wikipedia is the only place a community based approach really
> work. TYPO3 has it's own wiki (wiki.typo3.org) where everyone in the
> community can or should participate. With such an amount of motivated
> people, why aren't the wiki growing with tutorials, tips and tricks. The
> tools are there, and you are free to use them.

When I look at TYPO3 wiki and I look at Wikipedia wiki the two are not the
same. Using Wikipedia is easy using TYPO3 wiki is not.

One of the greatest differences as I see it between the two is that
Wikipedia link to almost every other section and has a well structured
layout. TYPO3 wiki does not on both counts.

A quick example is this page:

http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TypoScript_Quick_Guide

In the first few paragraphs:

Documentation Matrix
TypoScript
Modern Template Building Tutorial
mininews plugin
Futuristic Template Builiding (TemplaVoila)
lib.myobj
.....

None of these are linked to their relevant sections.

So this leads to a number of problems:

1) How to encourage me to contribute and fix these things?
the wiki is not in my normal workflow - I visit it rarely. Why not? Probably
because I find it so hard to navigate so little is cross linked and I
cannot see a structure to the content. This is unlike the old documentation
which has a clear start and end and covers a specific topic. I tend to use
Google as my TYPO3 search engine and the results rarely bring back wiki
pages for me. No results no interesting information. 

2) So I feel motivated - I can't pay because I am poor. So I can contribute
some time. I look at the wiki help and I am not completely dumb but wiki
has its own crazy way of including links and dates etc. With no relation to
my HTML/CSS/TS/PHP background and so I need to learn something new. This is
an added hurdle that page annotations did not have and helps stop others
less motivated from contributing.

3) Structure. At present the wiki has grown in an unorganised way and I see
duplicate content which make me think, if I contribute maybe it has already
been contributed better but I can't find it. I have no certainty that if I
contribute it will in the right place.

The discussion of structure has been discussed everywhere in TYPO3 and in my
eye there remains only one true TYPO3 structure and that is TypoScript.
When the problem gets tough everyone needs to refer and understand TSref.

So why is the wiki not structured largely around TSref. Any related
information must span from this apart from maybe Installation!

Looking for wiki related TSref info I find:

1) The welcome page has no reference?
2) The developers page has no reference?
So I search for 'TSref'
3) Error: There is no page titled ":TSref". You can create this page.
4) But I see in the results 2 pages that looks like TSref

http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TSRef
http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/T3Doc/doc_core_tsref

Both these pages are largely blank? I do find a tiny link to Official
Documentation and guess what back to:
http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/references/doc_core_tsref/current/

Now you will have noticed that in fact "TSref" is the official
capitalisation of this doac and yet the wiki has no page for "TSref" but
does have a page titled "TSRef" which is not the official capitalisation.
Can wiki contributors not help by simply getting the capitalisation
correct?

So I leave the wiki thinking 1) The wiki is badly structured and 2) The
official documentation is on typo3.org so why bother going back to the wiki
for help again?

I want to help but c'mon put a structure in place that invites help rather
than hinders it. I am sure I am not alone is seeing this.

So my action points from this is simple - I'll learn the wiki way of
contributing in preparation for when someone on the committee publishes a
'TYPO3 Contributors guideline' Until then any effort I put in is likely to
be in a misguided direction.

Thanks!
Matthew

PS I decided since to update the TSref pages to make this a little more
sensible so by the time you read this I hope to have improved it a little.





More information about the TYPO3-team-typo3org mailing list