WikiQuette - UnityWiki

<<< EditingTips tells you the mechanics of Wiki writing; this page is for guidelines on how to use the facilities. Feel free to add to it. -- RobHague >>>

If you see a missing page, and you have something to say about that subject, and no reason to think someone else should have priority, then go ahead and create it.
Ideally, if you want to add something that you didn't write, it's better to put a comment in than rewrite the text; format it like the paragraph at the top of this page, i.e. surround it with <<< and >>> and sign it with -- followed by your name as a WikiWord or link. It's considered bad form to modify other people's comments without their permission, although it's probably OK to correct genuine spelling mistakes and other typos, as long as you're sure that that's what they are. It's OK to remove comments if you remove the thing they're commenting on, but obviously consider retaining them somewhere (like, say the the GraveyardPage for the page) if they have useful content.
Please leave any discussions at least 24 hours after the last post before deleting them, in order to give everyone a fair chance to have their say (while not delaying maintenance too long).

<<< This is less important now that we have consistent, per-page Graveyards, but it's still a courtesy. On the other hand, it's a pain not to be able to clean up as you go, particularly when bashing out a format for a new page (see the current ComingAttractions design process, for example). Anyone think of a better policy? -- RobHague >>>

If you do remove anything, put it in the graveyard. You may not think people will want to see it later, but you are wrong and will be punished.

Comments

We need some sort of policy for the nesting of comments. One suggestions is that, in general, a reply should be indented at the same level as it's parent, unless it is being inserted between two existing comments (e.g., there are three comments and you want to add something pertaining directly to comment 2), in which case it is indented. SimonBooth has pointed out that this can lead to the following situation:

<<>>

<<>>

<<>>

<<>>

fine, but...

<<>>

<<>>

<<>>
<<>>

Any suggestions as to how to rectify this? Does it even cause a problem, as both doubly-indented comments refer, indirectly, to comment 2? AN alternative would be to scrap tree-like discussions, and stick to straight lists, but this would lose important information in some circumstances.

The reason this policy needs to be formalised, or at least discussed, is that I'm intending the add a "reply to this comment" link, and it'll need to have a default behaviour.

-- RobHague (who hasn't made this a comment so you can see what's going on)

<<< Why do we need a "reply to comment" link? The current stuff seems to work fine... -- Steve McIntyre >>>

<<< Speaking for myself, I have three modes of operation on the Wiki; one is browsing, which is just like the web. One is adding or editing the content, for which the current system is pretty good. The third is using it as a discussion forum - I reply to other people's comments (like I am now). While the current system allows you to do this, it seems like there's unnecessary effort (click edit or double click, scroll down to find the thing you want to reply to, work out what indent level it's at). It's not bad, but something specific to this task would work better, and it seems a common enough task that adding the feature would be worth the effort. Of course, you wouldn't be forced to use it - whatever extra editing features are added, you should always be able to edit comments and everything else in the standard Wiki fashion. -- RobHague >>>

<<< Hmmm. So how are you planning to show them - as buttons next to every comment? And I very much think that the suggested indent is wrong - a reply should clearly be indented one level from its parent -- Steve McIntyre >>>
- <<< I was thinking of having a small image at the bottom right of the comment; hopefully not too intrusive. Indent-wise, I'd agree that replies to specific comments should be indented, but often we're just having a sequential discussion. This leads to repeated indentation, and as a result you end up with all of the comments bunched up in an ever-decreasing column on the right hand side. Perhaps the best thing to do is to provide a "reply to this comment" link, which indents, for every comment, plus a "continue this discussion" (similar to replying to the parent) that keeps the indent level the same. -- RobHague >>>
 - <<< Trouble is, people will push the "continue this discussion" button. What needs to happen is that if you're replying to a parent, you click "reply to this comment" on the parent, but somehow the wiki knows to put your comment last. The repeated-replies-pushes-you off the screen is a problem I haven't seen solved in threaded newsreaders to this day, so I doubt it can be solved. We can't really indent them by a smaller amount, either, without having that apply to all indentations everywhere.
 How were you going to have the button work? Does it take you to a comment-only editing page? If so, how does one write the first comment? -- SimonBooth>>>
 - <<< I was thinking it would take you to the same page, with an edit-box to write your comment in-place. Adding an initial comment would be done via the normal editing interface (unless I can rejig the JS to have double-click comment on that element, but I'm not keen on that idea).
 What I meant with "continue discussion" was "reply to the parent of this comment"; but yes, it would be necessary to skip all other more-indented replies to the comment you're replying to. -- RobHague (who obviously lacks the willpower to work. Damn Wiki) >>>

<<< Perhaps we just need to accept that Wikis aren't threaded, and stop trying to treat them as newgroups? My experiments on other Wikis (okay one other wiki) have led me to believe that trying to do this just ends up in an almighty mess. Beter just to have everything at the same level, and add new comments onto the end of a running discussion, phrasing them so that they stand reasonably on their own as additions to the disussion rather than being direct replies to the last thing written. -- StevenKitson >>>

<<< Which Wiki? The others I've seen don't tend to have specific markup for comments, and I think that such markup is probably the single most significant (and poitive) difference between UnityWiki and most other Wiki software. If you look at the orignial Wiki, a lot of the pages degenerate into long sporawling discussions precisely because comment and content aren't seperated. Of course, it's just occured to me that you might be talking about the Plasmon wiki which Steve has ported comments to, so the markup isn't neccesarily the issue. In any case, I agree, broadly speaking; the default mode for discussions should be straight down (although I'd also suggest that nested replies as an option). -- RobHague >>>

<<< The ToothyWiki: http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl . No, it doesn't have background-distinction of comments, but I don't think that that's enough: it keeps comments and content separate, which is good, but it won't stop chains of comments degenerating unless we're pretty disciplined.

I don't see why nested replies are ever necessary; it's easy to make your additiosn to the discussion stand alone and make it obvious what you're referring to (as I just did there). And allowing them just opens the can of worms that leads to questions of nesting that have no right answer. -- StevenKitson >>>

<<< I'm increasingly of the opinion that we need to add a UnityForum to the UnitySuite; something along the lines of YaBB or phpBB but much simpler, and have a special syntax for links to discussions on it (which could create new discussion threads in the WikiWay), and which maintained a shared Recent Changes list (probably just by writing to the same EditLog) -- SimonBooth >>>

<<< I don't think moving discussions off to another page is neccesarily the right thing to do; I like the fact that they're right there with the content that they pertain to. I do agree that something to make it easier to keep them neat than not to would be a good idea, though - hence the "reply-to" links, that ensure the replies conform to whatever guidelines we come up with. -- RobHague >>>

<<< My opinion is that I like comments, and think they work well (especially since we have a stylesheet to turn them off). As far as indenting goes, we could follow the non-indenting model of phpbb and just allow quoting of previous comments. That would make it easy to move earlier comments to the graveyard to stop page clutter too. -- BenChalmers >>>

<<< Well, in my suggestion (non-threading) there wouldn't be any point in a 'reply-to' link, because you'd never reply to an individual comment -- you'd simply continue the disucssion on at the end, like this. That is in fact pretty much the point of what I've been saying: don't reply to comments, do continue the discussion. -- StevenKitson >>>

<<< Perhaps "Reply To" is a misnomer if we're not having indented replies; how about having "Discuss" at the bottom of every stream of comments with naught but whitespace in between them, which inserts a comment below, at the level of the least indented one in the stream? -- RobHague >>>