Повторяя предыдущие должности до переводаSorry I can’t speak Russian. My post is limited by the ability of translating software.
Thought people here should be aware of discussion in the English forum as it could well have an impact on the Russian wiki and ongoing documentation work here.
The wiki appears to have been working reasonably well.
It is getting reasonable number of hits The pages suggesting it is mostly used by beginners.
Hits PVD Wiki Home :- English (27432) Russian (6802)
Page Ranking English:
-- Руководство по PVD (11047) (Which was not easy to find in the old wiki)
-- Запуск PVD в первый раз (4734)
Page Ranking Russian
--Руководство по PVD (2823)
--Запуск PVD в первый раз ie Launching-PVD-for-the-First-Time (2092)
Unfortunately it seems like many users have difficulties when starting using PVD.
Given the wiki is being used mainly by new users (as instruction manuals usually are), the layout could be improved, focusing on new users requirements. This is currently being addressed by
cadishere.
Enhancing the wiki has recently been discussed in the English forum
Reviving the Wiki Two different approaches are possible:
Improve the existing wiki. Continue to use dedicated wiki software. The advantages of this approach are:
1) Good page version control. Tracking of who has made what changes. Easy reversion of changes. This enables all users to have edit permission. Encouraging all users to contribute to documentation maintenance. (In contrast to a forum where editing the help documentation requires moderator privileges. These are sensibly only granted to a small fraction of trusted users. These barriers will reduce the amount the wider PVD community will participate in maintaining the documentation.)
2)
Structures, providing efficient generation of lists / contents. The information content is language independent so only needs to be done once across multiple language versions of the manual
3) Language translation and tracking support is more refined, consistent with the wiki focus on maintaining a reference document vs the forum focus on tracking and storing conversations.
This wiki approach works well for community maintained documentation. With support across language barriers.
The alternative being discussed is to scrap the existing wiki and use the existing forum software instead to display the wiki information.
The advantages of this approach are:
1) Forum / Wiki administration is simplified as the same software is used for both.
2) A separate theme could be set for the help documentation. Adding some wiki features.
Illustrated by the forum manual. Note the login to the forum is different to the login to the manual there.
3) Searches maybe able to be setup to span both the wiki and forum. This may not be desirable for new users trying to look something up in a PVD manual.
4) It provides tighter control of official help documentation as most users will not be able to modify it. Community members could be allowed to maintain the documentation by granting moderator status to the documentation board. Even so the barriers are likely to result in less community participation.
This approach works well where documentation is developed and maintained by staff. Different language versions would also be relatively independent.
Unfortunately views have become polarised between these approaches
It's been a useful experiment, but the unavoidable conclusion is that no wiki is going to work very well in our circumstances.
we could scrap the idea of an HTML help file entirely. Instead, program help would simply run a search. This can be done now with a Web search like...
http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?action=search;advanced;search=help
Reviving the Wiki thread has been locked and
further discussion blocked. I do not agree with Rick's venomous defence of a system which will increase nostra’s dependence on him, reducing the wider PVD community participation. But nostra appears to support his position, so must approve.
Whatever the reasons, the result is likely to be the need for the Russian community to decide how they wish to maintain their documentation as direct translation from English wiki pages may not be an option in the future.
