Fedora Knowledge Base

[Karsten Wade]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 02:11:09PM -0400, Ricky Zhou wrote:

> One thing I'm curious about is what you guys think about doing these
> sorts of howtos via the wiki vs. the knowledge base.  Although the
> barrier to entry for a knowledge base might be a tiny bit higher, it
> might have workflow features that you guys would find handy.

I'll paraphrase a bit about what I said on IRC.

While a kbase can contain larger articles, it is usually filled with
short, topic-based solutions to specific problems. "How to start
Apache web server", "How to see how much space is available to add to
an LVM", "How to add a new logical volume to an LVM"

A wiki is nice for organizing a set of such instructions with wrapping
to make it a nice topic-based short guide.  "Installing and starting
Apache HTTPD Web server", "Adding more space to an LVM".

Wikis are also more responsive to the day-to-day needs of an active
mailing list and IRC channel.  This page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Writing_how_to_documentation_on_the_wiki

... in intended to give simple guidelines on "how to" writing for the
wiki.

There is a modular idea we might consider, and might as quickly
reject.  

1. If each kbase article represented a discrete, canonical piece of
   information, and ...
2. If it fits in to a longer wiki article automagically, then ...
3. Each wiki article is a chapter (or large section of a big chapter)
   in a full-length guide.

Full length guide writers will remind us (rightly!) that a long
document without a narrative and flow is going to feel like ... a
bunch of smaller how-to articles jammed in to a chapter wrapper.

But I've often wondered what would happen if just steps 1 and 2 were
implemented.  Would a wiki article feel disjointed if it consisted of
a number of smaller kbase articles?

BTW, all of this could probably be done within a Zikula instance, so
it is less wiki-like but more wysiwyg-like.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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