Wiki Patterns

Patterns for successful wiki use

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help_out

Help out

The original wiki at wikipatterns.com is not available anymore, but the content was too important to be lost.

Thus the contents have been rescued with help of the WayBack Machine.

However this meant semi automatic converting HTML back to wiki syntax and that was not always perfect.

Simple Things to fix

These tasks can be done without any deeper knowledge about Wikis. Just look out for things like these:

  • Bad spacing. Often links or other formattings have some trailing spaces.
    Read this [[some link|website ]] , then...Read this [[some link|website]], then...
  • Unnecessary forced line breaks. There should nearly never be a reason to have a \\ somewhere in the text
  • Wrong headline levels. All pages should start with a H1 (6 equal signs) and then use the next smaller size for sub sections.
  • Broken internal links. When you see a red link, see if you can find the appropriate page to link to.
  • Broken external links. See if you can find a replacement or can link to the Wayback Machine
  • HTML Artefacts. If you see stuff in <HTML> tags it should be reformatted in proper Wiki Syntax.
  • Spam. At the end of wikipatterns.com some spam had sneaked into the content. Check links carefully and remove all suspicous content.
  • Link Simplification. When the title of a link is the same as the page it links to, there is no need to repeat yourself.
    [[WikiZenMaster|WikiZenMaster]][[WikiZenMaster]]
  • Spelling. Spelling and grammar mistakes happen, they should be fixed.

Pattern Cleanup

This requires some more knowledge about Wiki patterns.

  • Deduplicate There are some pattern pages that basically just describe different aspects of the same pattern. They should be merged into one and all the links to it adjusted.
  • Rename Some patterns have unwieldy names. They should be renamed (using the move tool).
  • Categorize Some adoption patterns are actually people patterns and vice versa
  • Examples More examples from real life wikis for the patterns would be very helpful. For some things screenshots may help

Classification

We currently classify the Patterns and Anti-Pattern into just two focus groups:

  • People - how people's behaviour influences the wiki
  • Adoption - basically everything else

It probably makes sense to rethink this classification. The adoption focus seems to broad and might be worth to be split up.

Possible other focus areas:

  • Content - the different kind of content that fit or not fit the wiki approach
  • Permissions - how different approaches to permissions influence adoption
  • Technology - what kind of technical features in a Wiki engine can help or hinder adoption
help_out.txt · Last modified: 2018/11/28 16:02 by splitbrain