please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

(this is what I wrote to mailing list)

Dear people,

please search for existing articles before creating new ones!


I used this morning over an hour of my time for led customization and just got a message that it has already been done(http://wiki.maemo.org/LED_patterns).... and yes, alltough the page was pretty hard to find.

http://wiki.maemo.org/How_to_personalize_your_N900
http://wiki.maemo.org/Customizing_Maemo
http://wiki.maemo.org/Customizing_maemo_for_power_users (this is what I did today)

what should be done to those pages? I myself would vote for the first article mentioned to be removed and embedded to two others. Just like Users - category is split to beginners & power users. Second one for beginners (nothing with root or terminal etc) and third one for the dirtier customizations for power users. But I want to have publics opinion too before I do anything.

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

How about we use the wiki standards, and make sure pages are properly categorised and named?

Then, maybe, we wouldn't have people creating the same article 10 times over.

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

if wiki pages was more visible and easy to find that would solve the problem of duplcates

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

which page of those isn't categorized? the original customization page was categorized by me about 1 month before first retail n900's arrived to people.

categorization is a bit confusing: where to put led blinking modifying things: n900 hardware, power users, ???

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

partly yes, but it really can't be much more easier.

what about putting every beginner -category article also to users -category? would that be good or bad thing? so every beginner/power user -article would also be found in users -category straight?

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

Sorry Ossi - I created the LED_Patterns article. Blame it on wiki inexperience - I posted the links around in various threads here referencing customising LED Patterns, but didn't think to link up the article to others related to customisation within the wiki itself.

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

There is a much bigger problem in the whole organisation for the Wiki, such as proper categorisation. I've shied away from it as i do not currently have the large amount of energy or time to invest in it.

I have been attempting to pool the ideas from a N900 Modding thread into this article http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Cas07/Sandbox/Customise:N900 and although it still is not complete I am struggling with what to name it and what categories to add/create for it. However now the other worry that articles very similar already exist is rearing it head.

My push for more awareness http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40983 is a double edged sword as we need the awareness to get more contributors/editors but with a fractured navigation structure in place it will put off users.

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

I would also politely suggest that the wiki search is ... unimaginative. For example, if I want the User FAQ, I must remember that it's 'FAQ' not 'faq' - otherwise I shall get no result. For something as simple as capitalisation, I'd expect the search to be able to find related pages.

Could we get a wiki-power-search?

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

Yes, I'd rather the wiki search be case-agnostic.

Re: please search for existing wiki articles before making new ones
 

The Power Search in the forums does actually have an option to search the wiki but obviously requires heading to the forums to do a search...