discuss: Thread: howtopedia

I see this, with a name that could be a problem (or not?) = 
howtopedia

jdd

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Forcing a disclaimer to be displayed
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 11:28:31 +0200
From: alain bellet ####@####.####
Reply-To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list 
####@####.####
To: ####@####.####

Hi,
We are developing a project of an online encyclopedia of 
simple
technologies and practical knowledge (www,howtopedia.org). 
For this
Platform we use Wikimedia.
Cause of the potential risk of misuse of such technologies 
we decided
to force the user to pass through a disclaimer validation 
process (to
discharge us from reponsability in case of accident etc...).
For implementing this I have to put a test (session + cookie 
based)
to all articles.
Where would be the best place to put this code?

Thanks in advance for your answers,

Best
Alain Bellet
_______________________________________________
MediaWiki-l mailing list
####@####.####
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l



-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

jdd wrote:

> I see this, with a name that could be a problem (or not?) = howtopedia

There is already a similar issue regarding the
Wikibooks "How-to bookshelf".

The Wikipedia entry "HOWTO" redirects to "How-to" so
the HOWTO class of documents at TLDP is not visible.
This could be taken care of using a disambiguation at
the entry for "HOWTO".

TLDP has had HOWTOs for more than 10 years but we have
never looked into the branding issues and now there
are numerous projects that could be mistaken for us.

Likewise there are a number of other documentation
projects starting too, some have been mentioned here
earlier.

It does however mean people do need good documentation
and that Google is not always the best solution when
looking for an answer.


Regards,
    Stein Gjoen

Stein Gjoen wrote:

> It does however mean people do need good documentation
> and that Google is not always the best solution when
> looking for an answer.

googling, I most of the time fall on tldp documents

jdd
-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

> Stein Gjoen wrote:
> 
> >It does however mean people do need good documentation
> >and that Google is not always the best solution when
> >looking for an answer.
> 
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 04:37:07PM +0200, jdd wrote:
> googling, I most of the time fall on tldp documents

For me, searching on Google for solutions to problems with Linux has
usually not found LDP documents.

For example, I was having problems with the old parallel port but LDP
never had a HOWTO on that topic.  Searching on the text of an error
message usually finds a discussion messages which may or may not
provide a solution to the problem.

			David Lawyer

Monday, 3 October 2005 14:24 David Lawyer wrote:
> For example, I was having problems with the old parallel port but LDP
> never had a HOWTO on that topic.  Searching on the text of an error
> message usually finds a discussion messages which may or may not
> provide a solution to the problem.

It probably has to do with the search terms one uses to search for the 
information one desires for a certain situation.

When looking to learn about a topic from scratch, I search for the name 
of the topic and "howto". This often returns an LDP document, if one 
covering the topic exists. If, however, I am faced with a problem 
having a narrow scope, as in your example, I tend to search for a 
specific error message. As you state, this more often than not results 
in hits from mailing list discussions.

This is not a failure of the search engines. They return list 
discussions because these *are* the best sources of information 
covering the circumstances of such messages.

The issue, then, is that most howto-style documents fail to provide 
practical troubleshooting sections.

Howtos give top-down, step-by-step instructions on how to approach new 
topics, detailing inner workings and giving a thorough theoretical 
understanding, but they often miss out on an opportunity to convey 
bottom-up information when things don't go according to plan.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups;
I am subscribed to the tldp discussion list.