On Aug 15, 11:07*pm, Phil Addison wrote:
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:30:46 -0700 (PDT), in uk.d-i-y
wrote:
On Aug 15, 12:18*pm, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:57:22 -0700 (PDT), wrote:


To correct this is simple:
"Wiki Subject Categories" at the very bottom of the page, needs renaming
to read "Contents" and moving near the top of the page, and ""Wiki
Contents" needs renaming to read "Index" and putting just beneath
Contents.

Phil

Sounds good, just done that.



The idea was to move the content in 'Main page' out, renaming it
something else, and make the 'Main page' redirect to the contents
page, this one:
http://www.wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index....ecial:Allpages

No the default "main page" needs to tell the user what the wiki is about
and then lead them to indexes and/or search methods.
But it's not an "introduction" it's just a list of articles. Nothing about
why or where those articals have come from.

I'm unsure why you think that imoprtant to a first time visitor. Task
number 1 is always for them to be able to read whatever article they
want - a list of all the articles does that - as would your list of
categories.

*some* people go to an information source to look something up; many
others go there to learn about the whole subject, or to find out what
the subject encompasses. E.g. "I've just bought a house, I want to look
into this DIY lark I've heard about".

of course. And a list of all articles is ideal for that. If its
presented as a list of categories people will read some but die of
boredom fairly soon.

If I'm new to the wiki, and I've been given a link from uk.diy to a
wiki article, I want to read the article.

Obviously!!

Anything else is just waffle
to me at that point - certainly it has its place, but its not what I
want to read first, and if an article listed on the front page
addresses what the wiki's about I can read it when I want to -
probably after I've got the diy job done that I'm halfway through.

As a specialist contributor, you appear to be seeing it from that POV;
step back and think about the needs of the wider readership.

I cant agree. Unless I'm mistaken, most people find the wiki by a link
in a ukdiy thread, and at that point what they want to read is just
that article. Then maybe they get curious, and want to see what else
is there. Allpages immediately shows the wide range of stuff the wiki
covers, and the amount of info there is.

Then there are those that find it by other means, and want a general
read up on diy. Again the same applies for allpages.

A person can get into the wiki from any page, whether its the present
main page, allpages, categories, anywhere. It seems from this thread
that diferent approaches suit different learner styles, so lets offer
them all, and give them a choice of all of them on the Main Page. Lets
point them to all of allpages, categories, and a structured page yet
to be written.


The basics appears to be there already, it just needs some sorting out.