[D-community-discuss] knowledge base structure

[Nicolas Dietrich]

Hi Chris!

On Tuesday 27 February 2007 16:03:56 Chris Lale wrote:
> I've been playing around with some of Nico's ideas on the wiki that I
> manage (http://newbiedoc.berlios.de).

cool!

> 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

okay. still i think "only" searching is limiting, which is why i'm thinking 
about a user contributed tree structure.

> 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".)

Yes, this is basically it. 

> > 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.

Most end users won't do that. What I am thinking off must be programmed first, 
e.g. as a wiki plugin.

> > 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.

I find it somehow complicated to create an own subwiki instance for every new 
language. 

> > 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.

I know, that's how a wiki works and I really like wikis. However my points 
mentioned can not be easily done within existing wiki systems because I'm 
thinking of _a lot_ of extra functionality. To implement this, an own wiki or 
wiki-like knowledge base engine needs to be created or an existing one 
extended. I'd rather go for MoinMoin (for the language) or for ikiwiki (for 
the concept) or similar.

You can of course the proposed kind of questions-structure inside a wiki (as 
you started with), that's no question. And I'm all for doing that as a start.

It's just hard to realize further ideas, because
 * i'd like to split content in small atomic nodes (which are adressable, 
embeddable, localizable)
 * and allow different views on it (created semi-automatic).

but
 * there are no smaller content nodes than wiki pages
 * but wiki pages are the only view and you want to get more than one atom of 
information on a page.

I'll be thinking further about it and try to do some proof-of-concept coding 
and a better description soon.

Nico


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/d-community-discuss/attachments/20070227/2620a7c1/attachment.pgp