Restructuring techbase and userbase

[Dominik Haumann]

Hi,

-> Trailing slashes
We have a patch for mediawiki we usually applied on techbase so that it is 
automatically removed. I'm in favour of applying it again, and am strongly 
agains doing it manually!

-> More toplevel items
Meanwhile I'd agree to open techbase a bit more like we have on userbase. I 
think it's ok if an app has its own toplevel item. But then, all the 
content (tutorials, irc logs, contact infos, whatever) should still use 
subpages in my opinion. Having this kind of structure later (i.e. when 
maintaining it) helps a *lot* to decide what a page is about.
You mentioned below [[porting kjots to kde4 pillars]]. This is definitely 
something I'd like to avoid.

-> Overview pages
In usebase we have something like [[Applications/Multimedia]] which works 
very well as far as I can see. So I imagine it'll also work for techbase. 
Another idea would be to introduce the concepts of portals again: 
Portal:Applications. For those who are not familiar with this, the 
prefix "Portal:" is kind of a namespace. Afaik this has to be enabled in 
the localsettings.php file (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal)

-> {{:syntax}} usage
This kind of usage makes sense only in very few cases. As example, I'd like 
to mention e.g. Plasma/Tutorials which is then included in 
[[Development/Tutorials]]. But I don't see the real benefit to include the 
tip of an app by using this semantic, in contrary: Searching for content 
will deliver duplicates.

Flashback of the last two years:
I've reviewed almost every change in techbase for the last two years now and 
I don't have to change lots of stuff, so maintaining works quite ok this 
way. I'd like to stress that maintainability is one of the most important 
issues, otherwise we'll end with wiki.kde.org. That said, I also have to 
say that I don't have the holy grail either, so: Who Codes Decides.

Dominik


On Saturday 03 January 2009, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm proposing some changes to how pages are organized and structured on
> techbase and userbase.
>
> It's not entirely clear where such discussion belongs. See
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Restructuring_techbase_and_userbase to
> catch up. Basically, I'm trying to make it more clear how to contribute
> to any particular team or module, and I want to structure techbase in a
> way to accommodate that.
>
> Currently some teams have pages which live below the Projects/ page, like
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Games, and particular games live a few
> levels below that:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Games/Arcade_Games/KGoldrunner.
>
> I don't think there's any need for all those subpages. I propose moving
> such pages to http://techbase.kde.org/KGoldrunner. Userbase already uses
> the userbase.kde.org/$APP scheme. Additionally
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Games would be moved to
> techbase.kde.org/KDE_Games, so that if you want to get started
> contributing to a module, you go to techbase.kde.org/$MODULENAME.
>
> I think Projects/ makes more sense for things like:
>
> Projects/Migrate KMail to Akonadi
> Projects/Port KJots to KDE4 pillars
> Projects/Move libplama to kdelibs
> Projects/Reviewing techbase and userbase structure
>
> Projects/ would look like an index of those projects. By using the
> Mediawiki template functionality, we can also have eg, KDEPIM/Projects
> which is an index of Projects within the KDEPIM team. [[KDEPIM/Projects]]
> would have the content like
>
> == KDEPIM projects ==
> * [[Projects/Migrating kmail to akonadi]]
> * [[porting kjots to kde4 pillars]]
>
> the [[KDEPIM]] page would then include that page:
>
> == KDEPIM module ==
> ...
>
> {{:KDEPIM/Projects}}
>
> {{:KDEPIM/Tutorials}}
>
> The Projects page would then include the projects from all the modules.
>
> {{:KDEGAMES/Projects}}
>
> {{:KDEEDU/Projects}}
>
> {{:KDEPIM/Projects}}
>
> To see this in action, see the source of
> http://userbase.kde.org/KJots/Tips, http://userbase.kde.org/KJots and
> http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials. There are some decisions to be made to
> make that consistent, but that's not hard. It's just something I want to
> get concensus on.
>
> The same structure of makes sense for Tutorials on techbase and userbase.
>
> Another issue I'd like to see fixed is URL normalization. If I use
> konqueror up while on a tutorial page, I get to
> http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ which is not the same as
> http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials without the slash on the end. There are
> a few ways to solve this.
>
> 1) mediawiki redirects for pages with subpages. Ie redirect
> [[Tutorials/]] to [[Tutorials]]. This is not a big job if we reduce the
> number of subpages and sub-sub-pages as I'm proposing.
> 2) HTTP redirects (301, permanent redirect request.url_with_slash to
> request.url_without_slash). I can't think of a reason someone would want
> a slash on the end of a page in techbase or userbase.
> 3) Maybe mediawiki has a setting for this?
>
> Yet another thing that I don't see a reason for is that it's not possible
> to create a 'normal' account on userbase. Why is that? Can we change it?
>
> What do you think of these ideas?
>
> Steve