Grokdoc:Suggestions
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Date all posts!
Every article should have the date it was written inserted automatically by default. In the LINUX / FOSS world things change constantly. The fact that individual 'X' had problems (or success!) installing "Debian" in 2004 is likely totally irrelevant in 2007. I cant tell you the number of posts, forum articles, etc. I have had to discard (only after wasting time on them) because they are totally out of date. pgmer6809 -at- yahoo dot com 2007-03-07
How to Enter an Article.
I dont see how to enter content. I go to the Editable Main Page, and there is reference there to 'using the wiki markup' to create a link to a new page, but there is no 'edit' button, and I cannot just start typing over the top of the current content. So how do I go about entering My Rant or whatever? Very frustrating. I spend 30 mins here trying to figure out how to do the most basic thing. And I fail miserably.
pgmer6809 -at- yahoo dot com 2007-03-07
- The Main Page is evidently locked, so only privileged users can edit it. This is usual on wikis, and is a necessary precaution against vandalism. To find out how to create and edit articles, follow the Help link in the left hand "navigation" menu. Steelpillow 06:31, 23 April 2009 (EDT)
Grokdoc is useful for refining rather than fixing
Nice aims GrokDoc has. I immediately thought of a helpful positive contribution but like pgmer6809 it took 10 minutes of faffing to find out how to offer this. Makes me wonder whether the GrokDoc founders are the right people to persue those usability aims.
I suggest that in each task GrokDoc is considering, first ask yourself how much of a visible application model the users have. In other words, the users need to understand the elements and structure of the system, and decide how to manipulate those to achieve their task goals. Menus and buttons offer the users access to invoke system behaviours, but on their own they typically don't describe system structure, so the user is not equipped to decide how to use them.
For example Word Processors support the concepts Current Document, All Documents, Selected Region, Paste Buffer etc. Font choices (e.g. Format:Courier) usually work on the Selected Region but the interface doesn't show this, so they appear broken to users who expect them to work on the Current Document.
If you can see from the interface that this is the case fix it first: you'll save yourself a lot of time trying to analyse confused users.
AnthonyRCroft A googlemail D com 2007-03-13
Categories
I notice that there is no category indexing of pages. Is there a reason for this? Steelpillow 06:31, 23 April 2009 (EDT)
GrokSaurus
Is GrokSaurus still a live project?
Namespace:Name title format
If it is, then care needs to be taken over the suggested GrokSaurus:Word title format. MediaWiki uses the colon separator for namespaces. If a GrokSaurus namespace is created one day, then any pages with GrokSaurus: in the title will mess up the database and cause a few glitches (been there, done that, how's your SQL?). Best to either create the namespace now before there are any problem pages, or to figure some other approach. Steelpillow 10:18, 23 April 2009 (EDT)
Capitalisation
Also, I think it would be better to use a lower-case 's', as in Groksaurus. MediaWiki automatically adjusts the first letter, so typing for example "grokSaurus:name" will create/link to the GrokSaurus:Name page. But Mediawiki is case-sensitive elsewhere. Typing "groksaurus:name" would be much easier, and would lead to the same Groksaurus:Name page as typing "Groksaurus:name", "groksaurus:Name" or "Groksaurus:Name". Steelpillow 10:18, 23 April 2009 (EDT)
