Talk:KB2Wiki Pilot

This gets pretty detailed. New stuff at the top please!

"Standard" system for translations

I'm thinking in translations into Spanish (see my User Page). We need a "standard" and "normalized" system for translate KB documents: draft, page pending aproval, or another. TraductoresAnonimos Alter on 2010, October 10 - 9:15 AM PST.

• Unfortunately for some pages of the localized KB revision control has been configured and a stable page exists. Given that translating the english original and updating the localized pages only when the english page has an update is the only way to keep the KB consistent in all traslated languages, revision control makes no sense (especially if you need the help of a reviewer to configure a stable version). --Torben Trautman 20:34, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Draft?

Should be updated the paragraph 1.2 What is the difference between "stable page" and "draft"? I think there is no "Draft" tab actually in the KB. Or am I wrong? TraductoresAnonimos Alter on 2010, October 10 - 9:15 AM PST.

Please do NOT translate Linden Lab Official namespace articles

This is because these articles are extremely sensitive and while good intentions to assist non-English-speaking Residents arise, one misstep could lead to them having an incorrect understanding of our actual policies. (It's happened before and we want to reduce the chances of it occurring again.)

Our Localization Team provides oversight for necessary translations and while it may be frustrating to have nothing there... we gotta ask them first; otherwise we may run into significant legal troubles.

So again, do NOT translate LLO namespace articles. Thanks for your attention. :) - Torley on 2009-08-19 @ 1:09 PM PST

Don't want to appear smart-alecky, though for completeness:

When you want to translate KB articles (including LLO articles), please join the official Community Translation Project! We're happy about new contributors!! :-)

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

^ Context is always appreciated. :D My comments above are focused on the KB2Wiki reviews. I've asked Lexie and Noelle for info on the CTO process. - Torley on 2009-08-25 @ 7:57 AM PST

And, I got clarification. Presently: KB2Wiki and CTP are two different projects, although a Resident can belong to both. (And we'll work on connections as we continue.) With CTP, there are Terms and Conditions which must be agreed on before joining. And for the time being, please do not use FlaggedRevs for articles outside Category:Knowledge Base, including translated versions of LLO articles — we're still sorting this out. - Torley on 2009-08-31 @ 12:31 PM PST

Mailing list

We're thinking of starting an email mailing list which would be easier to discuss across-the-wiki issues on. Talk pages are useful for stuff about ONE page but this page is also getting very hard to read, and wiki threading is manual.

Thoughts on how useful this would be to Reviewers as a way to communicate directly with Lindens involved with KB2Wiki? - Torley on 2009-07-14 @ 8:24 AM PST

My personal preference is to have it in the wiki, though I don't mind a mailing list either. Will bow to the majorities decision on this. =)

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 16:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

namespace name

Wouldn't "Linden Lab" or even "LL" convey sufficient meaning? "Linden Lab Official" would make urls be rather long when they appear in the address bar (use of URL shortening services is irrelevant in this case).

Since there is no existing "Linden Lab" or "LL" namespace, appending "Official" is entirely superfluous.

SignpostMarv Martin 22:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd second this remark.

I don't think that "LL" would be intuitive for most, though naming the namesape "Linden Lab" or even "Official", could be better.

A namespace with the name "Official" inside the SL Wiki would automatically indicate that it is "Linden Lab Official". And it would be shorter.

-- Lynch ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The KB2Wiki Migration Team discussed this at length — we know technically savvy folks like you would "get it", but there are many beginners who'd benefit from the clarification. This also includes outside traffic we'll get from non-Residents via Google and other sources. "Linden Lab" by itself is too vague, and "Official" — from who?

If a page name is too long, you can create a redirect or use an URL shortener like http://tr.im - Torley on 2009-06-24 @ 11:38 AM PST

"Official from who?" would be a legetimate question, though it wouldn't need to be answered within the URL. I noticed that Rand created this header and footer and suppose it will be (automatically?) added to articles within the namespace, containing the information. I think that the header answers that question :-)

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You catch subtleties like that. But a lot of people don't read the fine print, and if fetching an URL (not necessarily reading it but passing it to someone else), it makes it clear RIGHT THERE. - Torley on 2009-06-25 @ 4:03 PM PST

Review

Review is happening automatically for administrators when they create pages. See Special:Log/review.
-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

PS: People become auto promoted to editors when they... Do what? *confused* Can't be the edit count, or at least Strife would be in the group as well. But according to the user list, I seem to be the only one (by now).
I gained the status after performing this test edit to check if the flagged revs was kicking in where it wasn't supposed to. Please note that I didn't review that page. I gained the status afterwards. It was already reviewed from the start.

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

THANKS for catching this, Kate let me know and we're on it now. - Torley on 2009-06-25 @ 9:07 AM PST

On a slightly off-topic note whoever did the template for the LL official pages did a nice job. It really looks clean and clear. I think that eventually there needs to be a way for translations to be done even if it means LL hiring someone to do it or residents translating and LL reviewing before any translation is posted up officially since this you cannot translate this page EVER is to be troublesom. GW ^(T|C) -- 21:39, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that it's not well worded in that regard. Translations are happening for these articles, though these are the reviewed translations by the CT Projects, done in Japanese, French and German. For example, you'll find a translation of Linden Lab Official:Welcome Area Guidelines at Startbereichsregeln (KB), etc.

Guess it's just aimed to scare away people who would just translate without having it reviewed by someone in charge. -- ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

That sound like LL legal to a T. GW ^(T|C) -- 22:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll confirm we got the approval of LL legal on this. Agree we need better future scaling for translations, too. More polyglot Lindens across the globe! - Torley on 2009-06-25 @ 4:04 PM PST

I'm sure they have their reasons and I value my blood in my veins and not escaping through holes in my neck so I won't say anything bad about them (publicly) but needless to say there has to be a less confrontational way to word that. GW ^(T|C) -- 03:13, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe something like "Translations may be provided as part of our CT Projects only! These articles are not available for unsolicited translation."

Or something along these lines, worded by someone who's native in English ^^. -- ^{(talk|contribs)} 10:14, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Damn

Totally forgot about the restriction about not overviewing non KB articles when I got to the list. My bad and hope that didn't negatively effect anyone or the wiki. GW ^(T|C) -- 21:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I have emailed Kate about this btw to explain it to her since she seems to be the contact point. GW ^(T|C) -- 21:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, she let me know you got it! And yes she is the right contact for that. - Torley on 2009-06-25 @ 3:59 PM PST

Yeah, we are going to need overviewing removed from AGENT_AWAY & AGENT_ALWAYS_RUN. I do not want to be held captive by those who forget that they have set a page as being reviewable. Speaking of which, is there a Special page that lists articles which are in need of reviewing (that is, they have a pending draft copy); seems like an oversight if we don't? -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Ahh that would be Special:OldReviewedpages which is restricted. Is there a reason why it is restricted? It seems like something that would be of interest to more than just reviewers. -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:59, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I asked Kate earlier and apparently there's no way to remove the flag from specific articles which is very bad. I think I'm the first to accidentally review a non KB page but I'm sure I won't be the last and if we have to we can create a page listing all the non KB pages that need to be watched for that purpose but I really hope Kate is wrong and/or there's a better solution. GW ^(T|C) -- 03:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe there would be a way to remove it, though it can only be done by administrators. They might export the page with its full edit history, then delete it from the wiki and import it again. I believe, that could solve the problem. In case it does, we could turn it into a maintenance task. We could add articles where such accidents happened to a list and have them bulk fixed every three month or so?

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 09:21, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If it can be batch jobbed that would be a great solution since as I've said before, I was the first but I'm sure I won't be the last person to make the mistake. Maybe a category rather than a page listing them would be the best way to go about labelling them Category:Accidentally flagrev tagged articles anyone? GW ^(T|C) -- 18:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

A page would be easier to clear after the bulk fix. Category would require to edit every article again and remove the category...

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I don't have great hopes for this happening though, look at Category:Suggested_For_Deletion and how often Linden's look at that to clear out articles that should be deleted. GW ^(T|C) -- 18:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

In case this pilot succeeds, this would become the Doc Team Linden's main working space. Maybe the wiki get's more hugs and ♥ then. We'll see...

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad this happened to a couple of out of the way constants and not one of the functions, it could have been a disaster but it is a bad omen for things to come. Has anyone filed a bug report/feature request about this problem on the MediaWiki bugzilla? Does one already exist? -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Haven't had a look at the bugzilla so far. I got a feeling that Rand found a solution for this, which he tested at the dashboard article. I couldn't yet figure out how to do that or if I'm just lacking the right permissions, but it seems to skip the review process (not even allow a rating), although it's still listed at Special:OldReviewedPages. Guess that would be an acceptable workaround.

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 09:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The Migration team is working to identify an "un-do" solution for non-KB reviewed pages. I'd also like to resolve the cause, so that we can improve the review process for you, if we pass the pilot and move all the KB articles to the wiki. Can you provide feedback about the process that led to reviewing non-KB pages? Kate Linden 19:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)Kate

Red lines n stuff

Hi there!
I got to say that I'm a lil puzzled by now and there were a couple of questions bubbling up in the last 30 mins.

• Is it OK to use the version control feature on official translations of KB articles?
• While there is an explicit "don't translate these!" at the "Linden Lab Official" namespace, the other articles are under the hood of Project:Languages?
  • If so, can we put Template:Multi-lang on top?

    I just did that to Guide to Jobs in Second Life, connecting it with Jobs in Second Life - eine Anleitung (KB) and Guide de l'emploi sur Second Life (KB). Should I go on with that?

    • Edit:Just read the first mail again and realized that this is somehow answered for the pilot. Removed the multi-lang from Guide to Jobs in Second Life again.
      "We're using the English KB articles from the "Second Life for Beginners" folder in the pilot. I realize some of you are anxious to merge the localized articles into the pilot articles; however, this will have to wait until/if we merge the full KB to the wiki. In the meantime, we'll be prepping internally with our Localization team." (source: Kate's mail)
      ^{(talk|contribs)} 10:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Can we put Template:Help on top?
• In general, how far can we go? I mean, can I rip an article completly apart, maybe even put its contents in another article and then redirect the former article to an appropriat chapter? I'm currently not sure where red lines are (besides the style guide) and if I'd overstep them without knowing.

On a related note:

• Should translations of articles within the Linden Lab Official namespace go into that namespace as well? Might need a translated header in this case... which would most probably lead to a translated namespace (like "Linden Lab Offiziell", etc.).

Stuff like that goin to my head... Also → Categorisation: Do we need Category:Videos, Category:Video and Category:Video Tutorials? I just think that's a little messy... But I don't want to go crazy on changing it all without asking/discussing first.
-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey don't forget Category:LSL Video.

What I would do is move Video into Videos (along with a redirect, and make Video Tutorials a sub category of Videos. -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Ugh, didn't even knew we had that one... Yeah, way to messy. To many categories. Not just for videos. -- ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The LSL category is actually about Video in SL, not Videos about SL; so it's not as bad as you think. We are however up to about 120 LSL Categories. -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see... Yeah, though the LSL Portal got an established hierarchy. All the main categories fit in the LSL header. It was my motivation to do this for the Help Portal as well. To have a real structure and not to scare people with to many nuances from the start. It's not 100% fitting, though Customers given too many choices are 10x less likely to buy. We're not a store, but with this structure, we'd scare people off before they "buy" our knowledge.

I think Rand kinda answered to the category remark over here. Looking forward to the restructuring.

Anyway, bed time for me now ^_^ Will continue tomorrow. -- ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:18, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

No one willing to write something like
-------------------- ← red line, don't cross
? ... Well, I guess we'll just do it Wiki style then. I'll announce it here and no response/objection equals agreement.
I'm going to merge Numerical limits within the Second Life world into Limits, redirect the first one into the later one and then put Limits under revision control since it will be a KB article then. I'm going to wait with this for some time so you got enough time to object. I'm also going to merge the current three group articles into one. It's basically what I started a long long time ago with group, before I grew bored and kinda stopped to add stuff. I'll start with this once the current KB articles are all cleaned from superflous line breaks and stuff.
Other topic: SLURL vs. SLurl? We'd need to find some agreement on how it should be spelled correctly and then be consistent. I know that it's SLurl at slurl.com, though it became SLURL lately in the wiki as well as in the KB and was promoted that way from Lindens as well... A final decision?
One more @ flagged revs: When I currently review articles, I just review if the added information is accurate, complete and clear and therefor give my rating. I don't review the article as a whole since it wouldn't make it better when I give it a bad rating. It would just stop the latest revision to appear, while the latest revision could be a great one which would benefit the article. Is this the intendet behaviour? If not, how is it supposed to be?
-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:35, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

These are all great questions. Unfortunately, I didn't see this before the last team meeting, so we'll have to address them at next week's meeting.

I think merging articles is fine, as long as you have confidence in the validity of the information. If you are confident in most of it, but are unsure about specific items, then move those items only to the Talk: page temporarily until the questions can be resolved. That might make the article incomplete, but better that than to use incorrect information. This is a large topic that deserves further discussion and refinement.

Re: the articles Numerical limits within the Second Life world and Limits, I'd prefer a title somewhat less terse than the latter ("Limits" could mean almost anything). How about just "Numerical limits" or "Technical limits" or something that is more descriptive.

I also answered this elsewhere, but "SLurl" is correct. I personally hate it, because "URL" is an acroynm and IMHO there is no reason to lowercase it. However, LL has a trademark on "SLurl" so that is that. I know, I didn't use that spelling in the Map API articles, so they need to be corrected (sigh).

Finally, your practice re: just reviewing added information is correct, IMHO.

--Rand Linden 21:12, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

thx for replying! :-)

I'm not in a hurry and quite busy in RL these days, so having it discussed at your next meeting seems fine.

@merging: Yes, that procedure sounds good to me. As to the Limits article in particular: The information stored at that one should be correct.

@title: Yes, as long as we keep a redirect from Limits to the new spot and as long as that new title is less wordy than the current, I'm fine with that =)

@SLURL vs. SLurl: Unifying this sounds like a job for a bot. I'll look up how that works, since I've always been interested in this topic and this seems to be a nice motivation to turn the interest into code / something useful.

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't really see this until now. (Nested wiki conversation is tough to follow.) I'm in favor of leaving it as Limits because it's meant to include every conceivable constraint Second Life has (and almost all of the listed are technical/numerical) but if there comes a need to disambiguate due to a conflict, then we could think about moving it. Else, (1) keeping it simple and (2) making aliases to it is beneficial. - Torley on 2009-08-19 @ 1:16 PM PST

I'm fine with either title as long as we merge the two articles in the end ^^ Tho that will need to wait until the future of the KB2Wiki project is planned. Trying to be patient :-)

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 00:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Todo

In addition to Rands list at Category:Knowledge Base, I thought it might be good to have a spot for a todo list that everyone got access to. It's stored at KB2Wiki Pilot/Todo.
I'd be glad if discussions could take place somewhere in the wiki (or forum, a mailing list... whatever), since it's easier to keep everyone posted. I'll also not be able to attend the next DocTeam OH and since the wiki isn't an interesting topic for most, these OHs don't seem to be the best place to discuss these issues anyway. No offense intended with this. I can understand that people consider other stuff beeing more interesting. Though we'd need to discuss some of this stuff and it tends to go down in the OHs. Guess the wiki is the best place to discuss the wiki anyway.
-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I created KB To Do List based on the original "to do" list in Category:Knowledge Base, and merged KB2Wiki Pilot/Todo into it. A lot of the team is out this week for various reasons (Friday is a US holiday). We'll address some of the open issues when everyone is back.

I think creating a mailing list is a good idea. I'll look into it. In the meantime, we can conduct the discussions on the wiki. Also, I'd be willing to host an office hour focused specifically on the wiki, if there is interest.

--Rand Linden 20:59, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah ok, I redirected the old spot the new one.

@office hour: I'm not sure how many people would show up on a regular basis, so maybe we could have occassional meetings in case we got a particular topic to discuss where a wiki discussion seems to be to slow. Or let it take part at your team meetings and open them to the pilot's participants (or general public) :p

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot flag & XML dump

I used a bot to convert the SLURL → SLurl text for Knowledge Base articles and to fix the resulting double redirects. However, the program is throwing me warning messages every time it checks a page or commits a change, cause it lacks the appropriate bot flag. Would it be possible that someone adds the account User:Wiki Scribe to the bots usergroup? (Btw: Cube Linden isn't a bot and shouldn't be listed as one)
Furthermore: would it be possible to get an XML dump of the current wiki? It would help to commit search/replace changes to the whole wiki. According to the manual, it's also able to do it without an XML dump, but it would be a heavier load to the database and isn't recommended. We could also use such a dump to update our mirrored sandbox and to test changes there, before deploying them here.
-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 12:52, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I would love to get my paws on an xml dump of the wiki. -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 17:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Strife: Can I ask what your intended uses are? Would be good to have a set of reasons why we should prioritise this, since we'd need to put in a bit of work just to ensure that there's no sensitive data in the dump, and then set up dump automation (assuming you want it regularly). Yoz Linden 17:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Zai: As above, we may be able to provide a dump; however, the offline search & replace followed by an upload isn't going to work. There are several reasons why not, the most obvious one being that it'd kill all the edits that have been been made after the dump was created. I'm afraid that bots are going to remain your best bet - perhaps look for a different one? I know that there are quite a few out there. Yoz Linden 17:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Yoz, thanks for the reply! :-)

I see, that reasoning makes sense... A reason for me to have an XML dump is, to be able to mirror the Wiki and use it as a sandboxed test environment. We got quite some complex templates which are included in hundrets of pages (e.g. Template:LSL Function) and I'd rather not touch them when I'm not absolutely sure that a change works in the end. A sandboxed environment would give the chance to tweak and test things for an extended amount of time without effecting all articles transcluding the template. Furthermore, it would allow to test if a bot is really doing what it's supposed to do, before it bulk-borgs content. It would be nice to have but not neccessary (for me). We already got a somehow outdated mirror from the LSL Portal at least to perform tests.

However, the bot flag question for my alt account remains for me. For example: I'd like to let it change quotation marks (from "text" to „text”) on German translated pages to ensure consistency with the German Style Guide. I can make it operate on all articles in a specific category, so the XML dump wouldn't be needed for this particular change. It is possible to do that without a bot flag though it will be a little spammy for the Special:RecentChanges as well as in my console window, since it's throwing lots of warning messages without that group membership. It also has a lower API limit that way.

Greetz, ^{(talk|contribs)} 18:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Chunking

"Chunking" in tech writing parlance refers to creating appropriately-sized articles or information units. It's best not to have articles that are too short or too long. If too short, then there have to be so many of them that it becomes bothersome to navigate and find the information you're looking for. If too long, then the length become tedious and doesn't lend itself to easy scanning and comprehension. For very long articles with lots of images, load times may become a consideration. Exceptions are made for reference material.

Mostly, the KB articles suffer from being too short. This may nor may not be an issue. Therr are certainly a few that might benefit from consolidating. Suggestions?

There is at least one that is too LONG: Preferences Window Guide. I think it makes sense to break this up into separate articles for each UI tab. Thoughts?

--Rand Linden 06:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this should definatly be done. There are lots of related stubs that could go well when merged. Like "how do I join a group", "how do I leave a group", ...

One might argue that the specific question a user is searching for isn't displayed in the category anymore, after such a merge is done. But it is also possible to categorize redirects. That way, the full FAQ like name would stay in the category and then redirect to a certain chapter of the chunked article.

@Preferences Window Guide: seperating it per UI tab sounds like a good idea. Maybe best as subpages (for the breadcrumbs) and connected with a navbox.

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 14:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Rand, I´d be willing to sandbox play with that article in order to see how it looks when it´s cut into digestible pieces. Before putting work into it: I was wondering if there might be some changes to the preferences window in the near future because then it would make more sense to wait a bit... --Torben Trautman 21:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Reviewing non-KB Articles

I thought we were only supposed to review KB articles. Bug_Triage is now in draft mode since it was reviewed. --Harleen Gretzky 06:41, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunatly, Bug Triage isn't the only affected article... Current list of undesired reviews seems to be:

• Volunteer Portal
• Teen Second Life Volunteers
• Office Hours
• Creation Portal
• Linden Department of Public Works
• Help Portal
• Bug Triage
• List of Second Life Groups on Flickr.com
• Dashboard (stable version configured)
• AGENT AWAY (stable version configured)
• AGENT ALWAYS RUN (stable version configured)

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 12:44, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for this list. Reviewers should ONLY review articles in the Knowledge Base category in the default namespace. The pilot does not include translation of articles, either in the default namespace or the LLO namespace. Reviewers can edit and review articles in the Knowledge Base category default namespace that are part of the KB2Wiki pilot. —The preceding unsigned comment was added on 14:55, 13 July 2009 by Kate Linden

OK, we now know a way to get an article completly off the review cycle (thanks to Simone!!!).

Procedure: export the page, delete the page, import the page again.

This will discard every influence of former reviews/validations. We did that for Test2 and AGENT_AWAY, exporting and importing the complete editing history of these. However, there's a problem for articles like Bug triage... They are to huge (more than 2MB) when exported with the complete history... The Wiki throws an error when trying to import again, since the file exceeds the maximum upload file size. So one would either have to increase this limit or sacrifice the edit history and only export/import the latest revision. OR go with the former way to configure a stable version with low review standarts, though that doesn't take these pages off the special pages for the flagged revs extension, which might clutter mentioned pages in the long run...

-- ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:39, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The wiki feels slow right now. Thanks Zai, I set all those pages to show the current revision (aka "draft") by default. Doc Team discussed this problem yesterday before Simone found a way. We really don't want it to become a timewaster. That's good to know; we also think we should clearer communicate with Reviewers about this in the future — prevention is the best cure. :) - Torley on 2009-07-14 @ 8:22 AM PST