The Elsmar Cove Wiki Questions Discussion Thread

[isoreader - 2006]

In Reply to Parent Post by akehrer

That's true. I had the issue come up when I wanted to do the pmf for the Binomial Distribution and couldn't represent the combinatorial. I still think having LaTex avaliable would be good.

Aaron

OK you may be right. But I suggest Marc have a good look at the pros and cons against the effort put in to install LaTex (and likely maintenance). At least have a good look at the current bug list (I presume there is one).

[Scott Catron]

I wanted to increase the size of the alphabetical index that's on the main page and the top of each 'letter' page. (I have sometimes hit the wrong letter because they were pretty small - no, I was never very good a video games, either) I found a way to do that, but then I had 27 pages to change.

I thought there had to be a better way - and there is - Templates! Templates are an easy way to put the same content across many pages.

Here's how they work, make a page called [[Template:name]] where 'name' is the name of the template you want to make. On this page, make whatever it is you want to repeat. Then, after saving the page, the wiki markup for a template is {{name}} - this will insert the content that is at [[Template:name]].

So I've made a template for the alphabetical index: [[Template:Indexalpha]], pasted in the larger index mark-up, then I still had to insert {{Indexalpha}} into 27 pages, but if we ever want to change the format of the index, we onlyl have to modify the Template page and it will propigate to wherever {{Indexalpha}} is on a page.

[Marc]

Neat! Thanks!

[Scott Catron]

Kyle Hamar posted the following to my talk page at the wiki. I thought it was a good question and that we all should hash it out.

"Where do you see the wiki needing priority attention? Do we have a set of guidelines or other framework to follow for structure?"

I've been thinking about this also and was wondering if we should develop a 'to-do' list for everyone to work off of.

Here's what I see as priorities:

1. Formatting the glossary pages so that they have a consistent look.

Using Abilene Paradox as an example, at the glossary level, there is the term itself which links to a page for the topic. Terms with pages are blue, those without are red. We need to get rid of the red links.

After the term is a one-sentence summary. Anything more should be on the page. If there's not a lot more, that's fine, but we should have something for each term so that the glossary pages all look the same.

2. From there, we should expand the pages to include other pages to help explain each term. Taking Abilene Paradox as an example again, on the page are also red and blue links that are not in the glossary, but help explain Abilene Paradox (Paradox and Groupthink in this case). Whether we want to include them in the glossary is up for debate, but it adds to the wiki when concepts are explained.

3. A good-looking main page. I've been working on it (increase size of glossary strip, adding to the 'Do you know' section) but my wiki-fu hasn't progressed to using nice-looking tables and other fancy formatting. I can fake it enough by copying what others have done.

Anyway, that's my two cents. We need input from others and then Marc can define some guidelines or prioritize a to-do list.

Scott

[Marc]

That sounds good to me.

I plead guilty to falling behind on the wiki. I got busy here and have to dedicate a few days to it.

As to the tables and such, that's how I have been learning stuff other than what you have pointed out - Looking at the code in other wikis.

[isoreader - 2006]

In Reply to Parent Post by Scott_Catron

Here's what I see as priorities:

1. Formatting the glossary pages so that they have a consistent look.
After the term is a one-sentence summary. Anything more should be on the page. If there's not a lot more, that's fine, but we should have something for each term so that the glossary pages all look the same.

Judging by the last sentence of your point number 1, the higher priority is not the "look" but the content. To this I would agree.

However as far as the "look" goes, my suggestion is to remove all the Blue or Red linking from the main glossary word and simply have them as Black Bold. For those words with more information and with its own page, change the link in the index with a substitute word(s) such as "More..." eg.

Acceptable Quality Level - aka AQL - The maximum percentage or proportion of non-conformities in a lot or batch that can be considered satisfactory as a process average. More...

If this is "more" acceptable then lets hear it and we can work on changing it.

[Scott Catron]

In Reply to Parent Post by isoreader

Judging by the last sentence of your point number 1, the higher priority is not the "look" but the content. To this I would agree.

However as far as the "look" goes, my suggestion is to remove all the Blue or Red linking from the main glossary word and simply have them as Black Bold. For those words with more information and with its own page, change the link in the index with a substitute word(s) such as "More..." eg.

Acceptable Quality Level - aka AQL - The maximum percentage or proportion of non-conformities in a lot or batch that can be considered satisfactory as a process average. More...

If this is "more" acceptable then lets hear it and we can work on changing it.

I'm not sure this is the best way to go. The more our format matches well-established wikis (such as Wikipedia) the more accessible it will be for users.

There's no reason we cannot expand upon any of the terms in the glossary - even a little bit - so that each term has a page of its own. Seeing red links will motivate editors to create pages.

I'm also worried about 'definition creep' if we switch to the format you suggest, folks may just start adding to the definition without an easy way to get to a page for it and glossary pages will start to bloat.

It just seems like there would be less maintenance or administration involved if we keep it the way it is for now.

Anyway, just my thoughts, Marc can make the call.

[Marc]

In Reply to Parent Post by isoreader

However as far as the "look" goes, my suggestion is to remove all the Blue or Red linking from the main glossary word and simply have them as Black Bold. For those words with more information and with its own page, change the link in the index with a substitute word(s) such as "More..." eg.

I really want the words to be links rather than just bold black text. In part I'm looking at this from an SEO position. The page title (such as Gage_R&R) generated when a word changes to blue plays a good role in search engine relevance.

When this was started it was a raw list with brief definitions, which is fine. But I would like the raw word to link to its own page where we can address details. If you use 'More...' search engine relevance due to the page title is lost.
********************************
Last night I started a reply to Scott's post 36 above but my friend stopped by and I never sent the reply (forgot and closed browser after talking for an hour or so...) What I was thinking of is sub-page 'outline' structure such as a procedure has.

I was thinking something like:

===Definition===

===Links to Forum Discussion Threads===

===Links to External Web Pages===

----> Last night I had some better details as I had thought this out a bit (too bad I screwed up and forgot to send what I'd written). I'll try to focus on it again, but this should help relaying the idea.