Wiki.jriver.com talk:Community Portal

What is the purpose of this "community portal" section?

It's the right place for what I suggested the talk section of the main page for, of course!!! Thanks Marko... Gateley 09:49, 22 January 2007 (CST)

John, thinking ahead to a time when these pages are full with various discussions, I take it we use a heading to start a discussion, and then subsequently, use the "add comment" (+) link to contribute to each topic being discussed? marko 10:55, 22 January 2007 (CST)

Wrong!! We use the "add comment" link to begin a new topic for discussion. Clever, huh? :) marko 11:34, 22 January 2007 (CST)

wiki direction?

John, I browsed through the pages added from the help files, and, obviously, they relate to v11.1 Is the general idea here to bring those pages up to speed as far as v12 is concerned? marko 10:55, 22 January 2007 (CST)

Ideally, the content would primarily be for MC 12, and have notes/links that cover the differences for MC 11.1 and previous versions. But covering MC12 is the most important task. Gateley 11:57, 22 January 2007 (CST)

this is a test comment..

need to see what happens!! :P

I see now, it places your discusion in an editable section. neat. marko 11:31, 22 January 2007 (CST)

Pretty cool! Gateley 11:57, 22 January 2007 (CST)

Perbcast

Hi Jeff, the perbcast project is in limbo at the moment, and until things get clearer, I'd rather not have in on the wiki. It's not publically available at the moment. Gateley 19:19, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Structure of the Wiki

Did Matt and Jim have any specific reasons why they thought the wiki wasn't structured well enough? Or have any recommendations? The problem with MC is that there is so much functionality and unfortunately that makes it very difficult to understand initially and try to create a manual for it. For example, I talked my brother into buying it. He has a BS in Computer Science and has been in the computer field for 21 years. He got MC installed and had to send me an email and say, "what now?" There is just so much there and it is not really intuitive for the new user to get going. I gave him tips on what to do to start but if there wasn't a manual for someone to turn to, I don't know how anybody could figure it out unless of course they started bombarding the forum. Maybe manuals are useless written by the software companies and that is why there is a big market for the Dummy or Idiot books. If you know the program too well, it probably makes it difficult to explain to someone how it works.

As far as any recommendations on how to structure the wiki, I thought the initial purpose was because it was difficult to keep the online help updated and for a way to add additional content easily. Whenever I have a question on a program, the first thing I do is go search in the help. Ideally it's when I'm on a dialog and I can simply press F1 to get that information. If the online help doesn't work, it's off to a forum to try and get the answer. So if the online help isn't going to be kept up to date, the structure of the wiki should then probably look like an online help file with the initial online help as a start?

Regarding the last forum post with tips, there is a header on the home page that says "Tips, tricks, and extra content". It would belong either in a real "Tips and Tricks" item under there or perhaps split up each of the tips and tricks and put them in their specific locations within the wiki.