Starter Thread for How To Wiki Questions

If you have questions about how to use the wiki, please consult the Access Wiki Help topic. If don't see an answer there the meets your need, please post your question in a reply in this thread which I am monitoring by email.

Glenn

One thing I've sorta wondered about was that we look at how Wikipedia articles are written, they have a references, extra reading, and external links section.

Right now, we have some external links in the body of the article. I wonder if it makes more sense to use references or move to the external links section? I'm somehow divided on that issue because moving it to a separate section means more scrolling for the user and to be honest it's not all that clear to me why they wrote in that particular style. Using references instead may make more sense, perhaps???

BTW, Wikipedia has a lengthy article on "Manual of Styles". Here's the section dealing with the links. Should we adopt it as it is or maybe work out a better way to address the need to link, especially external links, within the body of article?

See also this postfor some additional questions/comments from BananaRepublic.

My thoughts on links are that, if the link is to an article that is specifically an expansion on a particular point, I would rather see the link 'in context' so to speak.

The manual of style is a good place to start but I think we can/should shape the wiki to our needs and not just conform to external general rules. I have to confess to not having read the wiki manual of style but I understand that some content that many of us would like to see in Access Wiki (tutorial types of content for example) do not conform to the general wiki standard.

Paraphrasing what I understand from some discussions, the Wiki standard is to have encyclopedia/theory types of articles, not practical how to's. Some of us (well at least me) feel that theory is the foundation but we also need to include practical examples of how to implement the theory.

Glenn

Yes, I agree. In a thread prior to the facelift, we had a brief talk... Can't remember what thread it was, but I think we did reach a consensus that Access Wiki would be more closer to wikiHow than Wikipedia in spirit. Hopefully, we will eventually develop a Manual of Style for Access Wiki - the reference to Wikipedia's Manual of Style is primarily for our edification so we don't have to build from the ground up. Unfortunately, the rationale for preferring an External Links section over "in the body" links is not all that clear to me so I was fishing for a good reasons to agree or disagree.

I feel that the linking to MSDN documentation will be more controversial, though I can't see us re-inventing the expansive documentation already done by MSDN on various minutiae of Access objects' members. The question of whether to link to internal articles first and redirecting to external links also will be a bit of challenge.

BTW, you quoted a post that talked about signing... did you mean to quote the other post?

Just had an idea. If all help files are in a .chm files, could we ask Microsoft for the permissions to extract the content out of the files and upload to the Access Wiki? We could then work out a way to separate the content from Microsoft and content supplied by us? At least that would resolve the need to reinvent the wheels by referencing the help files from various versions for object members for which most part are reasonably documented while leaving us free to add or provide a better code examples on a more conceptual levels? That also would free us from needing to depend on externally linking on MSDN (which could get broken).

Think we can try and ask Microsoft?

Looks like you are right BR. Blame it on a senior's moment at this end.
Glenn

While that sounds like a reasonable idea, Banana, I think there would be legal and copyright issues. It's not likely that MS would want to give up ownership of the help files so that they could be published in a medium that explicitely excludes copyrighted material.

Glenn

IANAL, but I don't believe copyrighted materials is prohibited- only that permission must be granted.

This is what we have on the Access Wiki's edit page:


Wikipedia's Using Copyrighted works from others.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask??? (IMG:http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/dazed.gif)

True. I will bring it up with Gord.

Glenn

This thread is now closed. Please post your wiki questions a new topics in the Q & A Wiki Forum

Glenn