[D-community-discuss] knowledge base structure

[Chris Lale]

I've been playing around with some of Nico's ideas on the wiki that I 
manage (http://newbiedoc.berlios.de).

Nico Dietrich wrote:
> [...]
>
>
> To find information, some sort of search mechanism is often used. This is fine 
> for people who know how to use it, but it's often not suitable. If you don't 
> know the right keywords, a fulltext search often returns too many results and 
> a title search none (in a wiki). 

Mediawiki gives you both article title or page text matches. Try 
searching for "modem" at http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Help:Sandbox

>
> That's why I think the structuring should be done in a wiki way as the content 
> is. There could be different entry points for different kinds of users. This 
> is an example of such a structure with some example questions: (of course 
> this is will be splitted on many pages - on the entry page you'll only see 
> the top level points.)
>
>  / i have a problem
>     / hardware doesn't work
>       / it's about graphics
>       / something with the network
>       / da printa
>       well, first off, printers suck! that said, 
>
>     / i'm missing a program
>       / graphics
>         / raster (something like photoshop)  .. gimp, krita ..
>        
>       / presentation ("powerpoint") ...
>         .. or try keyjnote. it's a small app dedicated to do exactly one thing
>
>         how to i get my external vga port to work?
>         - see: Hardware/ExternalVga
>
>       / multimedia (sound / video)
>         / play all formats
>         / play mp3
>         / play ogg
>          about sound systems ..
>         great projects: ubuntustudio / linux-audio-user
>
>   / i want to change something in my system, but fear to do something wrong
>      / updating
>
>      / removing things
>        / how to remove things properly
>        / how to deactivate things
>          / fonts ..
>        / do i need .. ? (running services, installed packages / libraries ..)
>
>  / i want to buy some hardware (which is supported)
>
>  / share some recipies
>    / post-install steps
>    / preseed configurations
>  
>  / i want to know more about
>    / the debian bug tracker
>    / security on linux
>      * cryptography basics
>      * i want
>        * secure web connections
>        * encrypted file system
>        * encrypt my emails 
>      * SELinux is about ...
>    / about open source / free software / and that community ..
>      / it's cool. i want to get involved ...
>    / random half-related things i always wanted to know:
>      / why does mailman send me a reminder each month, especially with my 
> password unencrypted?
>
>  / critics
>    / technical
>    / social
>
>   

I have been messing around with a small implementation of this tree at 
http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Help:Sandbox. Is this the sort of thing 
you mean? (Try "I have a problem" / "My hardware does not work".)

> Things can be restructured at any time. Within such a structure, a lot of cool 
> things can be done when thinking further, such as:
>  * allow users to "click" if some page that helped them out
>  * if the problem remained unresolved, allow the user to specify what the 
> problem was (impossible because of missing driver / is supposed to work but 
> doesn't / too complicated / need to compile something / ...)
>   

Every Mediawiki page has its own Talk/Discussion page which may fulfill 
this function. Have a look at 
http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/My_hardware_does_not_work for an example.

>  * intelligent algorithms or humans can evaluate this information to improve 
> the wiki structure.
>  
>   

Yes, a wiki needs a community to maintain it.

> 2. Aiming for complete localization
> This has already been said. One point is users should feel invited to 
> translate howtos etc. The more important one is: Users of other languages 
> than English should not only be translators, but just write down their 
> contributions in their native language. ( -> it's fine to have some 
> information not available in English)
>   

http:// wikipedia.org does internationalisation well, using Mediawiki.

> 3. Provide useful information for all kinds of users with different experience 
> levels
>   - on the structure level (search + tags + "guided" q&a)
>   - on the content level (gui kde + gui gnome + command line solutions)
>   

Mediawiki can do this with its "categories" tagging system.

>
> [...]

Other useful features offered by Mediawiki include the ability to view 
all previous versions of a page and to diff them. This gives you a kind 
of version control.

-- 
Chris.