Criterion for forking build instructions for new source versions(was: [sldev] Better build instructions)

[Lawson English]

Rob Lanphier wrote:
> On 07/25/2008 02:58 PM, Boroondas Gupte wrote:
>> Ricky schrieb:
>>> the neext question is how do we know when to just tweak the existing 
>>> article, and when to split a new article? Do we only ever split?
>> Coming up with a criterion is easy. The difficult part will be to 
>> apply it:
>>
>> My suggestion: Whenever it is possible to change the description so 
>> it'll *keep working for the versions it used to apply to*, as well as 
>> to one (or more) additional version(s), just modify the article (as 
>> long as things stay practical and readable, that is). If that can't 
>> be done in a reasonable way, fork the article.
>>
>> To determine when that's the case -- well, the wiki articles do have 
>> discussion pages.
>
> Another important consideration: consider inbound links, and keep the 
> *links* up-to-date.  We need to consider that people will be deep 
> linking to this wiki from unexpected places, and search engine results 
> may not always be optimal.  For example, the page "Compiling the 
> viewer (MSVS2003)" currently has no disclaimer in the title that it 
> only applies to 1.20 and older.  When 1.21 is released (and maybe 
> earlier), the ideal solution would be to fix that, and for the following:
> 1.  Rename "Compiling the viewer (MSVS2003)" to "Compiling the viewer 
> (MSVS2003 - 1.20 and earlier)" with a new disclaimer added to the top
> 2.  A redirect from "Compiling the viewer (MSVS2003)" be placed to 
> whatever article tells you how to compile the viewer using CMake, 
> since someone who tries to visit that page title probably wants to 
> build the latest viewer using MSVS2003.  Links to that URL should go 
> to whatever the right instructions are for the latest viewer.
> 3.  Fix up any places where there's a link to "Compiling the viewer 
> (MSVS2003)" and it really does mean "give me the old page".
>
> If this sounds like a lot of work; well, it is, which is why fewer 
> pages (in the future) is probably better.  It's handy to keep the old 
> content around, but it should be increasingly difficult to find, 
> because otherwise novices are going to stumble into it and get 
> frustrated.

Now that I understand better how Categories work on the wiki, I've been 
using them a lot (too much?). Perhaps two categories could be setup and 
all current pages go into the *_current category and when they are no 
longer useful they get put in the *_archives category instead. If 
something appears with a direct link,  it should be marked with 
*_current. That way people can know what is current and what is archived 
by just checking the relevant category, which can always be linked from 
the main * page anyway.




Lawson