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Dropping the Tutorial namespace

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 4:45 pm
by mvangeest
As the title says, I would like to propose the removal of the Tutorial namespace in favour of the Tutorial category. I've been looking into consolidating the different types of information on the Wiki (such as FAQs, tutorials, help screens, API docs etcetera) and I can name the following arguments for removal:
  • Consistency: there's no FAQ namespace, though API15, API16 etc. are admittedly useful. However, tutorials do not have a significantly 'special' structure that would warrant a namespace.
  • Flexibility: categories are easier to add and remove, not to mention the fact that categories can have subcategories and are easier to view an index of.
  • Extensions: index articles such as the Management series use the DPL extension, which selects articles based on their categories and not their namespace. For example, http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Override_JFormFields is not shown in the list.
  • Use: http://docs.joomla.org/Category:Tutorials shows that either documentors are ignorant of the namespace, or they just like categories more, as the majority of the tutorials does not use the namespace. The list of Tutorial: articles can be found on http://docs.joomla.org/index.php?title= ... amespace=0
I wouldn't mind doing most of the work of moving, but I'd like to get community consensus first.

By the way, shouldn't there be a central JDOC discussion page on the wiki for such proposals? On projects like Wikipedia, it seems that keeping the discussion right next to the discussed content works better than having a separate resource.

Re: Dropping the Tutorial namespace

Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2011 11:28 pm
by Chris Davenport
I think that's a good suggestion. In fact there is no Tutorial namespace as such. It's actually a "pseudo-namespace" (see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pseudo-namespace) which was accidentally created when we imported some old content from an earlier, non-MediaWiki wiki. It would be good to systematically remove the Tutorial: namespace in favour of a Tutorial category, so if you have the time, please go ahead and do it.

Regards,
Chris.

Re: Dropping the Tutorial namespace

Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2011 3:31 pm
by mvangeest
The interesting thing is that the page you linked to says that namespaces can only be searched using Special:Search when they're officially recognized. Since there are Tutorial and Tutorial Talk checkboxes on the search page, the namespace might be official after all. Anyway, such support can only be removed once the namespace is empty, and currently it's far from that. I'll start working on it now.

Re: Dropping the Tutorial namespace

Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2011 9:01 pm
by Chris Davenport
If I remember correctly, the Tutorial: namespace was added *after* most of the earlier material was imported so some pages will be in the real namespace and others in the pseudo-namespace, if you see what I mean. Anyway, please carry on moving pages out of Tutorial: and once it's clear it can be removed cleanly.

Thanks,
Chris.

Re: Dropping the Tutorial namespace

Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 12:23 pm
by mvangeest
I finished the move yesterday. Only redirect pages should now remain in the Tutorial: namespace, and I'm not sure if they still have links pointing to them (Special:WhatLinksHere is useful, but applying it to every single page isn't fun). Anyway, it might be wise to keep the redirect pages around for some time so links in bookmarks, in the forum etc. will keep working. However, since Special:Search doesn't show redirect pages, I believe the namespace has outlived its usefulness. The Tutorial: pages can later be removed using the Special:PrefixIndex.

By the way, I have also created the JDOC:Proposals page and added another proposal, just for the sake of brainstorming.