Suggestion: Explain what a "wiki" is in the main links...

For the vast majority of people on SL, they have no idea what "Wiki" means. You look for troubleshooting information on the main website and all you find is something labeled "wiki" and they aren't going to know what the heck it means. I've been on the net for almost 10 years and I first saw the word here in SL and I had no idea what it was. You think "Pixiedust Wigglefeather", a 19 year old on her new E Machine is going to know what a "wiki" is?

I know a lot of younger people who know perfectly well what a wiki is.
Wikipedia is used by entire high schools full of people for their assignments.

I know too. It's the stuff you make baskets and chairs out of. I have a wiki coffee table.

Labeling the help sites "Wiki" is like labeling a page "HTML page". It doesn't help a person who is looking for how to play to find the help they need.

That many "high school students" know what the term wiki means doesn't make it a sensible lable.

The pages that are for logged in members only should have a prominent link to the support wiki and it should be labeled something like "Help with Building, Clothing, Groups etc."

In addition the Help menu in the client should have links to both the support wiki and the scripting wiki.

Yes, exactly my point. Those in most need of help are the least likely to find it by using jargon instead of precise language. You also have a lot of non American users who may speak english but when you throw a word like "wiki" at them you make their lives harder. Wiki isn't in the dictionary nor is it an english word.

Anytime I say wiki on the forums, I usually link directly to the wiki anyway.

Cross -

Linking to it when telling someone to look at it is one thing.

People seeing the word "Wiki" out of the blue is another thing entirely.

I'm a longtime gamer & Web-programmer; and I agree that using it as a term in menus and such where newbies are going to see it is not a GoodThing(tm).

The suggestions on alternate names are really good IMHO; and I would whole-heartedly support a change to one of the suggested alternates on the Website & in upcoming versions.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

I think that since it's under the "Help" menu, it's obviously intended as a Help Resource. Perhaps it should say "wiki page", or "Go to the wiki website". If I were looking at the "help" options, and saw "Wiki" but didn't know what it was, I'd try clicking on it to find out. On the main page, however, it would be a good thing to put a prominent thing saying, "Why a wiki? What's a wiki anyway?" and link to a definition/description.

Well, true, true. I mean, really, we should be referring to it as the LSL wiki (or Scripting wiki, or something), since calling it just "the wiki" is kinda like telling someone to go look in "the book" for something.

As an aside, if we are referring to the LSL Wiki, I don't think that it would be much use to people who don't already know what a wiki is. Or have previous programming/scripting experience. It's an information resource, not a tutorial. If you don't already have programming/scripting knowlege, it's less than likely that you'll learn from this unless you have "the knack".

I do believe this won't be such a big deal in the future as memeprop continues to expand, and the term "wiki" is understood on a more global level -- much as "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are.

In the meantime, it is definitely good to educate and help get people in the know.

This being a metamedium, hyperlinks are often appreciated.

Knowledge is power!

Huh, I thought it was the intarweb now-a-days...

Say, what's a 'memeprop', Torley?

Ah Cross, it's short for: memetic propagation, which is essentially spreading new ideas and terminology like this to a wider audience so that more people know what it means... it permeates the consciousness.

Yeah, me too. I was looking for help on SL with my Intel chipset driver and spent some time starting at the link before working up the courage to click on it (was afraid it would take me somewhere that I didn't want to be, IE a link to a support email, or maybe some child porn).

Oh, here's a helpful page with a definition of Wiki that I like:

http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

"Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly"


Now, armed with this information, how does this help me fix my computer? A wiki can be anything. You can create a porn wiki or a BDSM wiki or a wiki wiki for that matter.

Hey Kath, where'd you say you saw this "wiki" thing in the first place? Please post the links and I'll check it out to see what confusing context it's in.

A wiki wiki? How wacky would that be?



(If Ogden Nash were still around, I'll bet he'd write a poem about wikis. How cool of a memeprop would that be?)

wiki wiki wiki!

I think there should be a wiki item saying what "wiki" means

We should also explain next to every mention of forums, what forums are.
Actually, we should begin every website by "This is a website. You are viewing it using a browser. That's the thing you see websites with. The web was invented by Tim-Berners-Lee. It is based on this concept of hypertext, meaning, text that can be linked to other text. Fascinating stuff."
And then by the time you are done reading that crap you forgot what it was you came here about. Hooray for dumbing everything down for the masses.
READ ON A MUFFIN:
Usage instructions: Remove wrapper from muffin. Insert into mouth. Eat.
WARNING MAY CONTAIN NUTS, OR NOT, WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE PUT IN OUR PRODUCTS YOU SEE BUT OUR LAWYER THINKS ITS A GOOD IDEA TO COVER OUR ASS JUST IN CASE A TERRORIST SQUIRREL DECIDES TO SLIP IN A NUT HERE AND THERE!

LOL! you teh funneh.

There are two wikis with SL information in them, the LSL wiki and the Support wiki. Thus any reference to "the wiki" is ambiguous in the absence of contextual information indicating which of the two distinct wikis is being referred to. The goal of the documentation for Second Life is not to educate people about file formats in general or the world at large, it's to teach people how to use the Second Life Program. The Support wiki has sub pages dealing with topics such as building, groups, etc. There is ample room on the SL client's Help menu to have links to the LSL wiki , the Support wiki , and specifics parts of the Support wiki such as Groups, Land, Clothing, Building, Animations, etc.

The Help menu could look sort of like this, (leaving out the other menu items not relevant
to the topic at hand:

Help
.....Scripting (this would go the the LSL wiki)
.....Support (this would go to the Support wiki main page)
..........Building ( this would go to the Suppport wiki building section )
..........Clothing ( this would go to the Suppport wiki clothing section )
..........Groups ( this would go to the Suppport wiki groups section )
..........Gestures ( this would go to the Suppport wiki gestures section )
..........Land ( this would go to the Suppport wiki Land section )

The words enclosed in the parenthesis above would not appear on the menu.

This would give us direct links to the appropriate help sections that we the user base can edit and keep up to date and correct.

TheresNo Hope's scheme gets my official StampOfApproval(tm)!



Not that my stamp counts any more than anyone else's opinion - but who doesn't like big ol' rubber stamps? They're fun and official-looking - bureaucrats have known it for years; why should they get all the fun?

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

I think the original poster's question concerned the use of the the term Wiki on the the Support web page. The menu on the left of that page reads as follows:

News
Land
Support
Wiki
Developers
Bug queue
Police blotter


A more useful arrangement might be:

News
Land
Support
Help Info: (this would link to the opening page of the Support wiki.)

Developers
Bug queue
Police blotter