Since 12 sept 2013, there is no FAQ and tutorials on OP Wiki.


Linux-SWAT

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I realized that yesterday.

Go there: http://pandorawiki.org/Main_Page

Click on "Pandora FAQ" and "Tutorials and documentation".

I won't scream like for my sabotaged own SL4P wiki, but i'm (negatively) amazed at how people let this happens on the very front page.
 
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Indeed. It's a shame the the deletion seems to have lost all previous revisions of the page (although you can get to the talk history of the page, oddly enough). Guess if anyone's got the motivation they're going to have to way-back machine the page to figure out what to put in its place.


In fact, here you go for free: http://web.archive.org/web/20120512231610/http://pandorawiki.org/FAQ


I don't know why that was deleted. I don't know of anywhere else on the wiki where that material is covered, but I haven't looked hard.
 
Lets rejoice!

Cant change the front page, the links are semantic, dont know if i have permission or how to do it. And it doesnt need change, it needs re-doing. The faq was was an embarrassment, the one you referred to answered nothing that could be done better. The main problem with the wiki is that, you cant find anything on the current mainpage. So we resort to a FAQ first, in multiple revisions. And then implementing things over and over again everywhere. This in turn over time makes the whole wiki into a mess with unmaintained outdated redundant bits all over the place.

The mainpage was no better in this respect, so in being the last page to change, we have to be ready with the replacement. And the replacement is not done unless things make sense. I dont much care for the current page, i want it to actually convey the info it does, not sew pillows under its arms because its broken to begin with.

We are fixing things and trying not to needlessly cause harm. Awaiting input on what we are doing, the mainpage is going away soon. If you have ideas or input, get involved. We need to work at pulling the rope at the same end.

The generic "tutorial" section was nixed (by me), as it had only 3 entries in the end. Instead they are moved to the corresponding categories.

As for why the main page is in need of change, there are too many reasons to list. See the wiki thread for explanations. 

http://pandorawiki.org/NewMain_pageLollaTest is how far we have gotten with a replacement. Keep that in mind when you read the following.
 
1 What is the Pandora?
Look at the image. See the text, already better than technical terms such as UMPC. That is a term for a laptop less than 1KG btw.
2 What can it do? Look at description text.
3 What can't it do? Osbourne effect. Skype and wow, really?
4 Why not an X86 processor? Are we _trying_ to confuse people?
Is the Pandora part of Game Park (GP32) or GamePark Holdings (GP2X)
Who is making it? What are the odds people know who GPH are? See TEAM
7 How does the Pandora compare to the GP2X? If you already know who GPH or gp2x is, you already know
8 Was the Pandora made to compete with the PSP / DS / eeePC / etc? Why not focus on how its different? Whats with this appologist approach? See /software Exactly, there is a category for that.
Pandora v2 Why on earth is this on the pandora wiki, in a FAQ section? See osbourne effect.
10 Software Questions There is a category for that

10.1 Emulation Questions There is a category for that. This is just a nested illogical menu.
11 Hardware Questions Ok, there is a pattern here, you want something you click on it. Only difference you dont click FAQ first for some reason.
12 Troubleshooting  FAQ/Troubleshooting and its a menu!
12.1 Warranty This info is wrong. See http://pandorawiki.org/Hardware_defects
13 Logo Questions Why not click the logo for that?

Please dont respond here, move to http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/14262-pandora-wiki-open-for-business-you-can-help/
 
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This isn't part of that topic. This is about the main page today, not the next main page which at the current rate of progress is months away from being any better than the current main page.


Granted, digging through the FAQ it's quite laughably out of date all over the place, especially if you dig into any of the subsections. But I still think having an FAQ is better than having basic info scattered all over the place amongst far more technical pages, even if there is quite a lot of duplication.


You should have rights to edit the main page boxes like this, by the way. We could kill the link to tutorials since there's so few of them, and they're unlikely to fill any need you had in mind when you clicked the link. Better for users to search for the relevant topic they're interested and find tutorials there.
 
Thanks for the help with the links. But i dont work like that. See /eat our own dogfood. I dont understand why we should have a semantic list of links that is only used in one place. Also, i want to replace the whole page, not revision it into shape.

No, it isnt, this has to do with Layout, General ideas. Pagelove Other ideas  And i know you havent read into it because

the next main page which at the current rate of progress is months away from being any better than the current main page.
But I still think having an FAQ is better than having basic info scattered all over the place amongst far more technical pages, even if there is quite a lot of duplication.
isnt http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_constructive_feedback

We need to work at pulling the rope at the same end.
 
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It isn't gone. comradekingu may have jumped the gun a little but the deletion didn't come without some planning. All the sections have been categorized, moved, and cleaned up.

Slackward FAQ

Hardware FAQ

I'm guessing the software and general questions have similarly been moved somewhere, or they were completely irrelevant anyway, correct comradekingu?
 
I have nothing to do with the slackware pages, except for the main one. Yes, its always a rationale. The quickest way to do things is explain things generally, look for input, then be more specific, then do it. Some cases its just a headsup within the group of people that are doing other things on the wiki. Im trying to be open about what is happening, but at some point, if you dont involve yourself while its happening, or have input, there is little to be done in retrospect other than explain. Which i try to do.

If you see the deletion log (when i delete things) they are always stating where the content moved to. Or why it was taken away. It might not be a whole rationale, but its a far cry from the -->why has someone sabotaged our page, we must revert to status quo, even though it was broken-approach.

Now is the time to explain in a constructive manner why the lollapage is not working, and what about the mainpage that is good, that isnt on the lollapage. If we are unable to convey your ideas into our practice, make your own page and show the world.
 
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Thanks Wizardstan.  That hardware docs page is already linked off the old front page, albeit in the developers links section, but that'll do for now.  I've knocked out the broken FAQ and tutorials links since other than that hardware stuff that's been saved, you're right that the rest of it was too out-of-date to be worth saving.

Kingu, I agree my attitude here has been a bit bitchy, but it pisses me off when the Pandora's public image has been tarnished due to breaking the official wiki front page and leaving it broken for months.  Granted, the information they would have got through those broken links would also be a bit of an embarrassment due to their age, but well, I didn't know that when I got pissed off, okay? ;)

As to why I think the new main page is lacking, I did forget that I was browsing the wiki with javascript turned off, so Lolla's test page just looks the same as your old big scary main page.  Now I have turned it on my eye is drawn more to the introductory text which is there, which fits the bill of the FAQ text I was thinking of pre-edit (sorry if you got the read that paragraph).  I will have to put my thinking cap on how to prettify it, but we're probably a lot closer to a go live with that layout than I thought we were.
 
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I dont care at all about personal relations, your anger does not affect me, its all good. If you have questions ill answer them, but i would rather spend time fixing the cause to the problems.

On that related constructive note, yes, i use my set of skills as an advanced and knowledgeable user to try and guide the users to the right place, advanced and novice.

As for sticking, lets see if people ask. About the wiki. Right now its a bunch of people, on the forum, asking about things on the wiki, because they cant find it. That annoyed me a lot, because i had great trouble finding anything too, factor in that im actually used to the old structure, and you begin to understand why there is now a very different system in place.

Right now i use it to direct people to the wiki for implementing their ideas and answering their questions.

How about we change the mainpage and see what happens. If there is much upset we could always, change back. (which is how everything everything else has worked since someone got involved) Very rarely do we change things back, and its not just because we are so arrogant ;)

People now complain about the mainpage, and my answer is implementing the newmain_lollapage

Edit:  Warning: This page has been protected so that only users with administrator privileges can edit it.

I remember now why i didnt change it. That isnt very democratic, since there arent alot of people to change it back. I would just change it and leave it open, but if i cant figure out how i at least let time pass for input.

The way i see it, things arent months away from happening, they are moments away from someone doing it.
 
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Moving a page without leaving a redirect will break links from external websites, even if you fix all the internal links on the wiki.

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Merging pages and deleting the originals breaks links in the same way. The revision history is also deleted, losing the standard form of attribution to the original authors, and this is probably copyright infringement.

I think Wikipedia's policy makes a lot of sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect#When_should_we_delete_a_redirect.3F

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MERGETEXT#Performing_the_merger
 
First point is mostly good, it seems people care more when they have an itch to scratch. I have no qualms with braking stuff that needs breaking. The last ones are up for discussion.

It isnt lost, it can be resurrected. I dont know that any info that was copyrightable was lost. But it is a very crude way of doing it, agreed. My apologies.

Ive figured out how to move pages. So i moved the newmainlolla to the main page. I think both are now open to edits for anyone, which is good.

I lost all my edits on my old account since the email system was broken and didnt send me a new password, but alas, I will figure out how to merge from now on.

Edit: That way of merging is what i have been doing, didnt do the # or {} though, but the concept is exactly the same. They all say where it was moved to, and it says where it came from if it has been moved. Both on the page and on the edit log.
 
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Re: copyright. The contributors agree to license their content under the wiki license, in this case the GFDL. The GFDL has an attribution requirement, expressed as preserving copyright notices, but the accepted standard on wikis is the revision history. Any time text from the wiki is used, the revision history for that text needs to be available to everyone who can see the text (not just admins). So this problem arises if you've ever copied text from a page and then deleted the original page.
 
I had a look and the accepted standard seems to be that deleting pages that way has been happening at least back to 2010. I dont know if regular users were at the liberty of undeleting things back then.

Real copyright infringement happens when someone uses that info as their own, and i dont think that will happen, and its not more legal just because its unknown. It isnt public domain yet It. It is preserved though, albeit in a more librarian and laborous manner. So the problem is people asking for their credit, which i will be happy to oblige to, credit where credit is due.

The wiki used to be a mess with redirects, duplication and everything everywhere, so blunt methods were used. But for future reference, how does one take two pages, merge them, retaining edit history for both, then deleting one, leaving no redirects behind? Section edit?

I tried moving one page over, then renaming the resulting page back to the first, that works, but only if just one page is significant.

I personally think users should have all the power an admin has, but that some things should go through supervision so as to avoid malice.

We need a good system for merging the german wiki with the english one. I think that will close down, is everyone expected to keep their stuff?
 
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I had a look and the accepted standard seems to be that deleting pages that way has been happening at least back to 2010. I dont know if regular users were at the liberty of undeleting things back then.
Do you mean the accepted standard on this wiki? I've not been around that long, but in the time I've been here, people on the forums have been complaining about you doing it that way. If the complaints are a recent thing, maybe the changes were just more annoying.
The previous complaints were more about the other downside: Doing it that way means using admin powers to make changes such that users cannot verify or revert them; and this is not in the spirit of wiki.

The wiki used to be a mess with redirects, duplication and everything everywhere, so blunt methods were used. But for future reference, how does one take two pages, merge them, retaining edit history for both, then deleting one, leaving no redirects behind? Section edit?
You can't. The accepted standard on Wikipedia and many other wikis is: copy the text to the new page with a note in the edit summary about what page it came from; then change the old page into a redirect. Any double redirects can then be fixed to point to the final target.
Redirects aren't a bad thing, and your quest to get rid of them seems to have annoyed quite a few people.

We need a good system for merging the german wiki with the english one. I think that will close down, is everyone expected to keep their stuff?
Good question. It might be possible to import pages with their revision history, but I don't know enough about that.
 
Well then it doesn't work, fix it the right way. We can resurrect all the deleted stuff and put it in {graveyard} Or let regular users see or resurrect deleted pages.

I think its strange that the " # redirect" in the deletion log doesn't do anything fancy in that regard.

My quest of knocking down the number of redirects is over, I use them now for what they are good for. Everything that is left now makes sense, for a variation over the theme sense.

The things that are left have high page-rank, and are largely good pages, they may have bad naming schemes, see→ Slackware.

Maybe ill have to make redirects that make sense for those. And for the pages I've moved as of late, i left redirects behind.

It may not be democratic, but then again, if you want to be a mod, put in the work, and then ask for it. In some ways i prefer that meritocracy over the retrospect complaining. But I've learnt a lot, and i have a lot to learn.

The work got done, for the bulk of what ive done thats as best i could, now its easier to see some hope in the wiki. My face value is worth nothing more than my own ability to now use the wiki. I hope the complaints were largely due to change, and that we can pull in the same direction now that its easier to thread light. (I think it was because found links to not work more than anything else. In turn thinking that the info was lost, or unavailable. I have however made very much effort of not losing any info. And if mistakes are made its not lost anyhow. Everything can be restored from the deletion log.)

I must admit i didn't read the FDL till now, i took note of the "if you don't want your info frivolously edited and transported, do not submit it here" or what it says.
 
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