TechWiki talk:Guidelines

Template:Need Input

I just edited this explanation to eliminate the word "parameter" as it seems a little too much like jargon; however, now I'm thinking that the intent here is for programmers (developers? I'm not sure what the right term is) to be reading these guidelines, then perhaps "parameter" is a clear, meaningful word for them. If it is jargon, then the rest of the template section should be written to get rid of it too. Aprilbosworth 03:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree the word "parameter" is pretty technical. I'm not quite sure how else to describe it, since I've dealt with this jargon for quite a few years. I guess it's time to pull out the Thesaraus.

P.S. Don't forget to sign your name using 4 tildes '~'; I have added your signature to your last post. Thanks. -- Mike Murray 15:52, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Although many participants on the wiki will be developers, we need the involvement of others as well. So reducing jargon is a good idea. I think your rewrite is good and could be extended to the other templates. I don't think we need a term to replace parameter as long as there is an example. --Eric Blood 18:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines vs. Manual of Style

I propose that this article (or portions of it) should be merged with the Manual of Style or at least be moved to the LDS_Tech namespace. --Steve 20:28, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I certainly agree that the Guidelines should be in the LDS Tech namespace. But I don't like the idea of merging the content with the Manual of Style. As I see it, there is a pretty clear distinction between the articles. The MoS covers specific wording choices, and the Guidelines covers procedures and wiki elements. Articles should cover a specific topic and not be too long. The current organization meets these goals, and merging would violate both principles, in my opinion. -- Aebrown 03:05, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I was being a little hasty. After further review, I can see the benefit of having these two separate articles. On reflection I think this article would be better placed in the Help namespace. --Steve 12:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

How to help people with guidelines

This question or concern is currently unresolved.

There are many contributors who are clearly new to wikis, or at least are not familiar with the standard practices. We've tried to collect some helpful guidelines in this article, but clearly some people have never seen these guidelines, or forget what they are, or disagree with them and ignore them. I tend to think most people who don't follow the guidelines are in the first group.

The errors I see most commonly are:

• There are a few users who are extremely quick to click the Save Page button when they are editing. They might make 15 changes in the space of 10 minutes that really clutter up the change log, and some are obvious errors that show that they never used preview to see if it was a good change before saving.
• Mislabeling of changes as a "minor edit." This is to be used only for completely non-controversial changes such as punctuation, formatting, etc. If you are actually adding content, it is not a minor change, even if you are only adding one sentence. I see many "minor edits" that introduce many lines of new content.
• Using title case, contrary to the new capitalization guidelines for titles and section headings.

Given that we value the contributions of all contributors, and we work under the assumption that they want to "do it right" but are just not aware, my questions are:

1. How do we help people know about the guidelines? They are mentioned on the Main Page, and on the Help page, but it's easy to miss those places. Is there some other way to make these guidelines visible? If we had a "Wiki Tip of the Week", is there a way we could make that sufficiently prominent to get people's attention?
2. When a particular individual is repeatedly doing things outside the guidelines, how can we help the individual? I have tried to e-mail some of these people, but none of them can be e-mailed through the wiki, either because they did not specify an e-mail address in their profile, or they have requested no e-mail. I really doubt that they monitor their User Talk pages, so that's probably not effective, either. Am I missing some way to communicate with them?
3. I think with emailing interface that we could in fact make a specific web address in terms of like someone.lds.org on the end of the email to signify that it is pertaining to the church. I can make all these if needed so that emails do get answered and not lost. It would in essence design our own email system that would be in specific to the church.

I'd appreciate any feedback on this topic. -- Aebrown 15:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I have been frustrated with the inability to email members in the past as well. Though this is a side issue to the problem at hand, I think it would help enormously to be able to contact every wiki member offline from the wiki via email. Might I suggest we make email addresses and receiving emails mandatory? Is this possible with the software? -- Mike Murray 15:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly possible, but enforcing those e-mail requirements would require customizations that only Tom (as far as I know) could do. Only Tom could tell if people have not supplied e-mail addresses, but have simply chosen not to receive e-mail. Any changes we would make to these settings would not affect current users, but if they supplied e-mail addresses, then at least Tom could e-mail them and request that they start accepting e-mails. -- Aebrown 18:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I think a polite notice on a users talk page, directing them to this article could help. When the user next logs into the site a notice that a message has been left, will be displayed at the top of each page they view. --Steve 19:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it might be possible to change the default skin to provide a short note next to the minor edit checkbox and near the Save Page and Show Preview buttons advising about their use and a pointer to the guidelines page. Of course, that's something only Tom could do as well. -- Eric Blood 20:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Appropriate content section

I feel that the new section on Appropriate content is well written and is a timely addition to this article. Steve 17:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)