Wikignoming: what is to be done

Tasks to be done by people interested in gnoming on this wiki. Please feel free to add your own tasks.

LV: Please note that these are not things that you should expect other people to take care of for you. The wiki is an interactive collaboration tool - please fix these types of things when you notice them!

Traditional role

1. Correct misspellings
2. Remove spam text from pages. If page has nothing left, leave one blank space
3. Restore pages that have been replaced by spam or nonsense
4. Add or modify category pages
5. Add category references to pages without a category [as of mid-November, 2008, there were over 1300 pages without a category]
6. Modify category references when they are misspelled, or not the correct wording (alas, some of the categories are singular, some are plural, and some have had names chosen that are not so obvious)
7. Fix broken formatting and links
8. At least one Wiki Gnome would like to see URL references like https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/1234567890 (that is, use of the page number) or http://mini.net/whatever/the/url/is/to/these/pages turned into [symbolic references]. That makes it easier for someone who might have some alternate need for the data from the wiki to find the reference.
9. Correct outdated information (in other words, update information)
10. Start a new Ask, and it shall be given page. Update the info on all previous versions (post your question at: ...) .
11. Move questions and answers from the Ask page onto the appropriate page, after a few weeks have gone by. Appropriate means a page where the topic would typically be sought. If it is a question about a particular Tcl command, that might be the best spot. If it is a question about a Tcl extension, perhaps that's the best spot. If it is a question about the Wiki, then find a page there. The original intent, when I created the first of these pages, was that there would never need to be more than one of them... LV
12. Those WikiGnomes with the skill, knowledge, and software correct pages containing invalid UTF-8 sequences.
13. Add references to pages when appropriate.

Non-traditional tasks

1. Okay, this is something that I (LV) have found fun to do (yes, fun... okay, so I'm weird. Nothing new about that... move along.) Grab the wikit file itself, extract the pages, and work on determining a) which pages do not have a category reference (there are over 3400 of these!), and b) which pages have no reference to them (there are at least 380 of these during mid November, 2008 which legitimately might deserve a reference somewhere). The first category are easy enough to fix - edit the page, and give it a category. We have tons to choose from, and if the page is unique, then creating a new category is relatively simple. The second category is for the orphan pages - in many cases, it is probably a page that is blank, either by accident, or by a misplaced square brace. In some cases, however, someone's contributed data but it never was referenced by any other page (or only was referenced on New Pages and someone decided to be helpful and delete older references). In those cases, it is

useful to add a reference in an appropriate place (or even to create an appropriate place), just so that people have a chance of finding the information.

CMcC thinks that whoever's doing all the 'application' pages ought to take a deep breath and be a bit more protective of the title namespace.

Applications in Tcl and Tcl/Tk -Software Development/IDEs- could as easily be called Software Development/IDE Applications. The 'in Tcl and Tcl/Tk' is completely redundant - if these applications are not in Tcl or Tcl/Tk they are noise and shouldn't be here. The '-' bracketing is just pointless.

The -Index- page idea is also (in my opinion) completely discredited. Please stop using it.

I intend to repair this damage wholesale. Look to the page detritus for a summary of what I think needs to be gone, soon.

LV: That naming was not created by one of the regular gnomes. And in fact, I would drop the Software Development from the titles... -wait, I think I already did when I created the IDE page.

LV There comes a time when an original page grows so large that it takes longer to load, and discussions, etc. can overshadow the original intended content. So I could see discussing a spin off page containing relevant branch information.

JM will reformating pages will be a valid wikignoming task?

I mean, not changing content neither deleting, just reformating so it makes more sense on how the contributions are organized and to improve the sequence of information

LV Note that the job of wikignome is one generally of self-nomination. However, personally, I will consider anyone who performs, or thinks about performing, any of the above as, at the very least, honorary wikignomes... Anyways, if you read over the page, what you will probably see taking shape is a set of chores being done by someone who loves keeping the wiki running smoothly. So I would say, to JM, that sure, reformatting pages is a valid wikignoming task. Why not?

LV 2007 June 19: I am starting a list of what I consider higher priority tasks that anyone wanting to do some wikignoming to consider. I won't be able to complete all these tasks - in fact, some of them I won't be able to start...

1. Locate, and update, nearly all references to mini.net - that site has been sold. So any references to files, pages, or images on that file need to be updated.
2. Locate, and update, pages containing invalid UTF-8 sequences - this is one of those pages for which I'll be able to do little, if anything
3. Locate any wiki pages refering to pages renumbered on 12 june 2007 and update the old page references to the new page references. One cause of this has to do with references to wiki pages by number rather than page title...

Lars H, 2007-07-28: It is probably a good idea to occationally check the usefulness of the Wiki viewed as an "ordinary website". For example:

• Go to the root page https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/ and follow links at random. Are the results what you expect, or do you get stuck in some small subset of the wiki? If the latter, is there something you could add links to?
• Pick some piece of information you know is available on the wiki, and try to find it (without relying on knowing exact page names or numbers). If it's not as easy as you expected, then think about what can you do to make it easier to find.

I'm a bit worried that we gnomes sometimes overestimate the accessibility of the wiki, because we've seen so much of its contents when they were new, on Recent Changes or (the now defunct) WikiDiff. New users don't have that experience to compensate for the occational lack of structure.

LV 2007 July 30 Good point. Also note that wikignomes can feel free to discuss things on the TclersWiki mailing list.

LV 2009 Feb 09 One problem with the ordinary website view of the site, now, is that the graphical front page has MANY links which lead to placeholder pages. I'm uncertain whether anyone has thought about taking on the project of transforming some of those pages into useful pages.

EMJ 2009 Feb 09 This prompted me to go and look at a few of them - I think they are not sure whether they are a Category page (by use of backrefs) or a static index. In the light of events a while ago, I am not sure we really want the latter. As an experiment, I have added a references link to the corresponding category to one of them.

LV The specific pages I had in mind say things like:

This is a placeholder for a page referred from the new Table of Contents and Wiki front page.

It will soon be replaced by real content, aimed at helping newcomers to Tcl and Tk.

Guidelines for TOC pages

    * keep short - less than a screen page
    * no discussion please

EMJ Indeed they do. Nonetheless some of them also have static lists of pages below that, all of them have a < <backrefs>> line which does have a parallel function to the category pages, some of them (e.g. Engineering) have the same name as a category, others (e.g. Medical) almost match a category name. Transforming them is a great idea, I just wanted to say why I am worried about how it will be done (and no, I haven't worked out my preferred answer yet).

LV 2009 Feb 09 Also, note that as of Jan 27, 2009, there were 10371 pages which had consequential content (that is, which had at least one character of content), 206 pages which do not reference any other wiki page (which means that's the minimum number of pages which have no category) and 330 pages which no other page referenced. That means that a user would only find that page if they happened to search for the right term.

I can provide more details if someone wants to email me.