Till now I only wrote 'how to's to answer question that where asked a zillion times.

Write the who thing would be a hell of a job.

I see next week was a long time away :)

But to resurrect this topic... I've recently compared the documentation for Gregarius and b2evolution (for my phpbuilder column), and found the Gregarius documentation far superior.

They use mediawiki, and I think implementing this for b2 evolution would make a positive difference. I know that the technical solution is only one aspect, and of course it still takes someone to write it all, but mediawiki is a better solution for documentation in that it could handle multilingualism eleganty (the b2evolution [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/]howto page [/url] (sorry can't link right to the page) is quite messy). An open wiki would encourage passer-bys to contribute (without having to go to the effort of contacting Francois), spread quality control issues across the whole community, keep a record of historical versions etc.

What do others think?

If the admins of this site agree, and set up mediawiki, I will happily help migrate all the existing documentation across, neatening things up a bit at the same time. I think this simple change can kickstart b2evo's documentation.

There was a lot of dialog about this and basically wiki-anything got two thumbs down. The problem is also what you see as a benefit: anyone can post anything no matter how incorrect it may be. I believe the final selection was phpmyfaq (or something like that), but the primary drivers both got busy with other much more important tasks in their lives.

Thanks for resurrecting the thread though, as it is something that really needs to be addressed. Personally I think we should use b2evolution to do it, but phpmyfaq had some pretty strong benefits.

Time to get some dialog going on this again eh?

Considering a zillion things (basically based on Wikipedia experience and on 2005 b2evo dev time statistics), I'm very much in favor of a Media Wiki installation.

Yep, wikis are incredibly common and useful, especially for documentation, and apparently most places are able to keep the spam level to a minimum, etc.

My vote is to go for it. I'd much rather have access to quick-writes on a wiki when I'm in the mood than any other method I've seen used.

I think the hardest part is just getting started.

Great, if most are happy with mediawiki then let's go for it. If the site admins install it (it's as trivial as b2evolution to install), as I said I will help migrate everything.

Regarding the issue of spam, the gregarius version uses captcha to reduce spam/vandal posts. Those who prove trustworthy get to edit without the annoyance of captcha. Of course, the wiki will need some moderators, just like the forums.

There's also an extension for integrating mediawiki and phpBB, which may be useful to leverage the forum users more easily (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PHPBB/Users_IntegrationUseful extensions )

OK, so before the months go by again, is anybody going to install mediawiki? :)

Here's a setup already.. http://manual.b2evolution.net/

See http://manual.b2evolution.net/mw/index.php/User:Fplanque and the discussion page there for an example.

I'd be interested how easy multi-lingualism really is..

Sweet, let's get the ball rolling...

I started to put some pages in it.
For the moment I just copied the pages that exits allready.
So, whoever has a good idea of what he/she wants to put in it, write an (empty) page, then it's easyer for others to fill it in.
At least than you know that you are writing something that someone else wants to read.

I copied over a couple manual pages for some practice. I'm still not sure of an easy way to edit existing pages unless they already have an "Edit" link. I can hack the URL but is there an easier way?

I also think it would be a good idea to get some sort of organizational structure early on...But it's great to see some work started already.

Edit: I've started a generic outline to maybe consider/alter to outline the manual. Feel free to mess with it (if you can...I stuck it on my User page since I wasn't sure where to put it).

http://manual.b2evolution.net/mw/index.php/User:Nate

Nate,
All page in the manual that exists have an edit button.
To make a new page, you just have to create a link to that page.

for example, you want a new page 'htaccess-stuff'
then you type in [[htaccess-stuff]]

and .. done..
You can click on the new link and that page exists with an edit button.

I recommand you read the FAQ on mediawiki on how to create decent links.
They do that for more than 5 years, so we can learn from them.

Thanks Topanga, I actually did spend some time reading the manual (enough people get told around here to do some research before asking simple questions), but as an example, the main page of the wiki (http://manual.b2evolution.net/mw/index.php/Main_Page) does not show any sort of edit link for me. That page obviously exists, but I don't see an edit link anywhere.

It's okay though, I figured out the keyboard shortcut (Alt-e) and it will automatically edit the page you're viewing.

Nate,
I just saw your profile and now I know that you are the perfect person to make the rough scheme from what has to be in the docs... ;)

It ends up that the wiki menu tabs on each page have a padding issue in firefox 1.5. The div id "content" is covering up the menu tabs. In ie6 this is not a problem.

Is there a way to tweak the skin or fix this? I'm really surprised that the out-of-the-box skin would have an error like this. But maybe it's just me. :-)

By the way, should we begin a new forum thread to discuss wiki stuff or should we keep it going here?

The outline, rough framework is done.
http://manual.b2evolution.net/mw/index.php/Main_Page

Now it needs to be finetunes...
Any volunteers ?

Nate and I have started.
http://manual.b2evolution.net/mw/index.php/B2evolution:Community_Portal

I'll close this topic.
I opened another one in this forum section, to discuss all the wiki stuff.