User talk:Emufarmers/Revamp

Thoughts on revamp

First of all, I'd like to say I'm glad to have you on board. I think you are going to be a big help in making this wiki a more workable and useful resource.

Broadly-speaking, I agree with pretty much all of the ideas you have had. I think we have to proceed very carefully with any kind of renaming and categorizing, because significant external linking (particularly from the customer forum) already exists. Project pages such as policy-related articles and the village pump currently reside in the DreamHost namespace. I don't find this approach particularly confusing because I am familiar with it on the Wikipedia. I suppose it is possible for the DreamHost namespace to be confused with a company-centric DreamHost category, but I think much will depend on how such things are presented. I'm okay with the Needless Capital Letters (which I refer to as "title case"), and because this a very "technical" wiki I think you will find they will be more necessary than you'd like.

Although I see this revamp as a top priority, I'd still like to see the first evolution of the policies finished so that we can get DreamHost approval - I promised DH that I'd get this underway ASAP. Revamp concepts that we like should also be incorporated directly into the guidelines and help (and to a lesser extent, the policies) - I hope that contributors will follow them and make our life a little easier. -- Scjessey 19:13, 26 Dec 2006 (PST)

The good news is that redirects mean that external links can still go where they need to go. I would certainly agree that since this is a technical wiki, certain wiki conventions might not necessarily be applicable: While we probably don't want to be using the first person, the second person would probably be fine for technical guides. I realize that people have a tendency to overuse title case when referring to technical subjects, but barring the presence of a good reason for it, I don't see why we should.

I've taken a stab over on the policy page at trying to articulate what I think we ought to have.

On a tangentially-related note, MediaWiki does allow administrators to customize the sidebar (navigation, etc.); unfortunately, this feature doesn't appear to be present in 1.4.0. It will mean that we can have all of the most important pages right at every user's fingertips. --Emufarmers 01:06, 27 Dec 2006 (PST)

I'm hoping that Sabrejack is pressing ahead with the more-difficult-than-it-should-be MediaWiki update. I'm particularly looking forward to the improvements in include-related stuff for templates and categories. I love the idea of a featured article, although with less frequency than the Wikipedia. I have always thought that the FA encourages good articles. -- Scjessey 07:20, 27 Dec 2006 (PST)