Wiki pages

[redwing]

OK, I'll do that part.

[psychoadept]

Great, thanks!

I'm a little swamped at the moment, but want to put my energy into adding the new skinning elements ASAP.

[psychoadept]

FYI, just changed my display name here to match the one on Wikia.  To save confusion, hopefully.

[Pingaware]

FYI, just changed my display name here to match the one on Wikia.  To save confusion, hopefully.

It's going to take me forever to get used to that scampbll

[psychoadept]

Well, yes, I imagine it will create confusion in the short run. 

[psychoadept]

I'm beginning to work on updating the wiki for 3.0.  Any help is welcome!

I got screenshots of all the preferences pages and all of the main menu today, but I don't have them uploaded yet.

I updated the File Menu page first because it was quick and it's changed SO much lately (screen caps will be added probably tomorrow): http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/File_Menu

My next priority is updating the layout pages, which will need a major overhaul.  Pretty soon I'll start posting pages here that could use help, because there's no way I can get all of this done myself in any kind of timely fashion.

[psychoadept]

I've finished the first round of updates, which is mostly the Preferences pages and the Main Menu pages because I see those as the "skeleton" of the site.  I also overhauled "The Anatomy of Music Bee" to basically be a reference for the new Panels Configuration window.

Other than general updates:
*I have tried to include the version number at the top of every page
*I've done a search-and-replace to make sure that spelling matches the MusicBee default spelling (mostly changing -ize to -ise or -yze to -yse).  It doesn't matter so much in the text, but I'd like all the page names and headings to match, and use redirects for alternate spellings.
*I've tried to update all panel and element names to match panels configuration, for consistency

Please feel free to check over these pages and make sure everything looks right, all links go where expected, etc (don't worry about red links):
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_MusicBee
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Preferences (including subpages)
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Menu (including subpages)

The only "content page" I've done much with yet is Devices.  Please feel free to fill in info anywhere you see that needs it.

[psychoadept]

Does anyone mind if I delete how-tos that are defunct?  For instance, I don't think this is possible anymore:

http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/AutoDJ_-_Creating_A_Custom_Radio

[Steven]

that seems sensible

[psychoadept]

Here's a new page: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Panel_Views

Can you all think of anything else that needs to be mentioned re: main panel views or operation that's not specific to a particular view or node?

[psychoadept]

Talking with AvikB made me think these statistics might be of interest.


Page views over the past four weeks:

Skins 8,922

Online Help Landing Page 5,951

FAQ 4,933

Plugins 3,409

Theater Mode 2,304

MusicBee Wiki (Main Page) 2,225

There's a significant drop-off after that, but Devices, the iPod/iPhone Driver, Library Preferences, Latest Update, Importing, and Tagging are all over 1000 views.


Stats from this page: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Insights/popularpages?sort=pv28

[hiccup]

Maybe for the new forum, the integration with your wikia could get a little bit tighter?
I know there is a lot of very good info to be found there, and it is really amazing what you created there almost single-handedly, and yet I always felt it to be a different entity. Some friendly but slightly distant cousin. But this might very well just be me?

Just throwing in a single thought without considering it more deeply, the FAQ could be a very important database of knowledge that could be pointed to for specific questions or comments in the forum.
Yet currently, I myself don't find myself very comfortable with the structure of the wikia, and hardly ever think of referring to it.
I am only guessing I am not the only one, since I do not very often see more experienced members pointing new members to the wikia or it's FAQ for answers or solutions.
The potential and the content certainly is there, considering searching the forum for answers is not really easy or fun to do also.

Any thoughts from others on this?

[psychoadept]

I would love to see all of that happen!

To be fair, redwing and boroda74 have contributed a great deal to the wiki, and a lot of the content I lifted whole from the old documentation by Steven.  The point of a wiki is to be collaborative.  If there's something I could do differently to make it a more welcoming place for others to contribute, please let me know.

I think some of it is just jumping in even if you're not sure what you're doing, though.    Copying other people's work and trial & error are your best friends on a wiki; that's how I still get things done most of the time. 

There are folks on the forum (yourself included) who know more about different parts of MusicBee than I do and could help out a lot.  For instance, here's a page that I bet someone else here could fill in WAY faster than I can.  My knowlegde of how the artwork and artist picture downloading works is pretty minimal compared to some of the forum regulars.  I keep putting it off because I know it's going to take me a while to sort out all the details and options.  http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Album_Art_and_Artist_Photos

[hiccup]

Let's wait until (IF EVER !!!) the new forum is live ;-)

And then, with help from the likes of AvikB, redwing, boroda74, and anybody else who has ideas on this and is willing to contribute, we could try to establish what can and has to be done in a structured manner.

I am thinking about:
- deciding on a clear and agreed on structure and interface of the wiki
- trying to bring the structure of the forum as close together as possible with the structure of the wiki (terminology, hierarchy etc)
- getting the look-and-feel (graphics, colors, interactions, etc.) familiar between both, from a user-experience point of view
- creating some sort of to-do, or 'missing content' overview, so anyone with specific knowledge or interest can easily see if his contribution is needed or helpful

And, this just pops up in my mind now, there is also some forum-like activity going on in the wikia.
Is that something that has additional value? It might be a bit confusing to have two different stages for posting questions and comments?

[psychoadept]

Sounds good!  The missing content overview already exists on the wiki, in some specific forms.

Wanted pages lists all the links shown in red on the wiki. Some of them just need to be turned into redirects, which I'm working on fixing currently (redirects are one of the handiest things about wikis - you can make "analyse volume", "analyze volume", "volume analysis", "volume normalization","replay gain", etc all point to the same page).  But some are pages that genuinely need to be created.  That's here: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WantedPages  [Update: I've finished with Wanted Pages for the time being.]

I'm trying get all the pages that need to be created turned into Under Construction pages.  That's the "under construction" banner that goes at the top of the page, and also adds the page to an "under construction" category: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Under_Construction

There's another category that I'm trying to clean up right now, but is useful if you see that a page needs updates but you don't have time to do them right then: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Out-of-Date

Those categories are listed on the front page of the wiki, under "helping out".

Edit: you might also find this page of interest.  http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Wiki_Contributors_Guidelines