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Author Topic: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels  (Read 2916 times)

trev

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Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« on: December 16, 2019, 02:40:21 am »
The Wiki has some very informative portals for various platforms and some not so informative and rather dated, but on the whole they're very useful one-stop platform shops for access to relevant wiki pages.

See: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Category:Portals for the full list.

I was a little surprised that a few them seem to languish with little attention paid to them, but I suspect it's because they're not readily "in your face" being hidden away in the depths of the wiki. It would be nice if they were listed on the main page...

Take a look, be amazed, and maybe add some content or update some content while you're there :-)

valdir.marcos

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2019, 05:15:22 am »
The Wiki has some very informative portals for various platforms and some not so informative and rather dated, but on the whole they're very useful one-stop platform shops for access to relevant wiki pages.
See: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Category:Portals for the full list.
I was a little surprised that a few them seem to languish with little attention paid to them, but I suspect it's because they're not readily "in your face" being hidden away in the depths of the wiki. It would be nice if they were listed on the main page...
Take a look, be amazed, and maybe add some content or update some content while you're there :-)
Very nice.

trev

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2019, 07:35:50 am »
Plus https://wiki.freepascal.org/Portal:WinCE which doesn't currently show up in he Portal category until an admin runs a script to update the categories [MediWiki bug :-(]

serbod

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2019, 08:41:57 am »
Briefly example of portals buttons for main page, with some images from gellery
https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/SANDBOX

trev

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2019, 12:10:04 pm »
Excellent serbod - that would look great of the main page (and the Specialised Search Engine paragraph towards the bottom of the main page could be removed because all the links thereto are no longer in existence).

Ñuño_Martínez

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2020, 12:22:03 pm »
Nice initiative, trev.  I hope more people get involved in the wiki to keep it up-to-date, not only with the portals but also updating articles.
Are you interested in game programming? Join the Pascal Game Development community!
Also visit the Game Development Portal

trev

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2020, 02:18:41 pm »
Thanks Ñuño. Yes, indeed, content maintenance is always a nightmare and is often overlooked  (I come from a legal publishing background).

Martin_fr

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #7 on: January 28, 2020, 06:42:36 pm »
Briefly example of portals buttons for main page, with some images from gellery
https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/SANDBOX
There is some concern that adding the images might lead to mis-informatian, if not done very carefully.

The wiki and its main page is for FPC an d Lazarus. The current list of OS, is a subset of what Fpc supports. It could mislead the new visitor into thinking that this is the full list of supported OS. (Rather than a sublist of OS, for which there happens to be extra info pages).

Also images are an attention grabber and that is a good thing, but it may take attention of any other info on that page.
Not all info on that page is necessarily worth the attention it has now (or even worthy of the main page).
But that needs to be considered.

trev

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2020, 02:04:06 am »
There is some concern that adding the images might lead to mis-informatian, if not done very carefully.

The wiki and its main page is for FPC an d Lazarus. The current list of OS, is a subset of what Fpc supports. It could mislead the new visitor into thinking that this is the full list of supported OS. (Rather than a sublist of OS, for which there happens to be extra info pages).

Also images are an attention grabber and that is a good thing, but it may take attention of any other info on that page.
Not all info on that page is necessarily worth the attention it has now (or even worthy of the main page).
But that needs to be considered.

I have never found the information I needed from the current home page which is not surprising given that it had not been significantly updated for 10 years! The most recent updates (2019, 2020) to remove outdated information were only achieved by my agitating and both you and Jonas responding for which I thank you and him.

I agree that addressing the split personality of the page is an issue. May I suggest that the page should be split into two columns with the left column (alphabetically determined)  being for Free Pascal and the right column for Lazarus. This would then help to alleviate any worries than people may have about Lazarus information misleading anyone about Free Pascal.

There may also be an issue with https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Main_Page proclaiming the wiki to be the "Lazarus Wiki" and https://wiki.freepascal.org/Main_Page proclaiming the wiki to be the Free Pascal wiki. I have no idea how to solve that issue. It looks like it may have been intended that there were two distinct wikis or wiki namespaces although  they currently both map to the same pages.

I agree that some of the info on the page does not appear to justify its existence. I would suggest that some of it (eg downloads, mailing lists etc) could be moved to the nav panel at the left in a similar way to to this forum again with Free Pascal and Lazarus separated.

I believe the fact remains that the portals are very useful thematic collections of information which make it very easy for people to access the information which is otherwise buried and scattered throughout the wiki. While I had no help from the main page, when I eventually discovered the existence of the Mac Portal via Google, I was so impressed with the concept that I greatly expanded its content by both adding existing pages, which were often even uncategorised, and created new content. I went on to create the Embedded, FreeBSD and WinCE portals.

If it would be helpful, I am happy to put in the effort to prototype the page on the wiki,  although I get the feeling that the page is so sensitive and I am so "out of the loop" as regards that sensitivity that I might just be wasting time I could otherwise spend continuing to translate Mathias' AVR programming pages for the Embedded Portal from the original German.

Martin_fr

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Re: Wiki Portals - Hidden Jewels
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2020, 04:29:16 pm »
There may also be an issue with https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Main_Page proclaiming the wiki to be the "Lazarus Wiki" and https://wiki.freepascal.org/Main_Page proclaiming the wiki to be the Free Pascal wiki. I have no idea how to solve that issue. It looks like it may have been intended that there were two distinct wikis or wiki namespaces although  they currently both map to the same pages.

They domains are aliases for each other, and in many cases (many of the "normal" pages) that is good.
I am not sure splitting the entry page (my domain) is needed (not even sure if it would be good).

More a point to make it easier to recognize that there are 2 projects...

 

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