Newbie questions about Gentoo Wiki User Pages

[midnite]

I jot notes about Gentoo usage tips in plain text files on my local computer. I am finding a more systematic way to organise my notes. Especial recently I combined Sakaki-ssn's user guide, Fearedbliss's user guide, etc, and with some twists of my preferences, to setup a new system. The steps in this note consist of thousands of lines in my plain text file, which is hard to read (even though I am using Vi markups and folding already). In addition, my notes may help the community, and on the other hand, the community may spot some weaknesses in my steps then improve them. These are the incentives for me to compose my notes onto the Gentoo Wiki.

Questions:

1) May I ask if the User page and the User subpages are publicly seen immediately? Can I make them private while they are under construction?

2) In the formatting help page, I see that "An article with 4 or more headings automatically creates a table of contents". But I cannot find a formatting of folding, just like the mobile version of the wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux. It would be easier to jump from section to section on a long page if there are foldings. If possible, I would like to have multiple layers of foldings. For example, not only folding the sections, readers my prefer temporately collapsing certain Note box or Tip box to increase readability.
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- midnite.

[ris_]

Hi midnite.

Sounds like this would be great content for the wiki ! As you say, this can help others, and putting things on the wiki will allow content to evolve, be corrected, reused, etc.

1) User pages and subpages are always publicly visible on the Gentoo wiki, as far as I know. If you want to work on things privately, it's probably better to work in a text editor and copy/paste content over to the wiki when ready (always save and backup work ).

2) There isn't a general-system of folding on the wiki currently, though for user pages this workaround may help: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:R16vsqypwn2zfqtn . The current style for pages on the main section of the wiki does not use folding headers however.

I couldn't find a greasemonkey or browser extension to do this, but maybe something like that exists?...

If you think this is something we should have, you could suggest it here: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Wiki:Feedback . I noticed a couple of mediawiki extensions that might help: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CollapsibleSections and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:HideSection . These are just things I found with a search engine, I don't know if they are at all suitable or not .

I think maybe note and tip boxes can be made foldable. See the source of this template for an example: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Template:Ednote . I'm _guessing_ this should be achievable without creating new templates, though it may be tidier to create new templates for this, and in that case maybe suggest it on the Gentoo_Wiki:Feedback page also...

If you do get into editing the wiki, here is a good place to start: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Wiki:Contributor%27s_guide .

Thanks for considering contributing, and all the best !
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Help_improve_Gentoo_by_getting_involved_with_documentation!
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ris

[NeddySeagoon]

midnite,

User pages under construction are visible to everyone but can only be edited by the owner.
Other users can create/add to the discussion page to leave feedback.

Pages are only publicly editable when you think the page is ready and move it to the body of the wiki.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[pietinger]

First of all, I would like to give @ris a warm welcome to our forum.

I am very happy to have another great developer (and wiki expert) in our forum, because I also believe that forum and wiki should work closely together (new knowledge from the forum should be transferred to our wiki; I also "abuse" our wiki as a "link station" when I answer users' frequently asked questions). Thanks again ris for helping us out here !

@midnite, I know you from some discussions about IT security and since I am very interested in this topic myself, I am very curious about your results. Maybe you could add a link to your article(s) later in this thread ?

[ris_]

Thanks pietinger .

Yes, there seems to be a lot of great info on the forum that could be of even more help to users if it got copied to the documentation (on the wiki), as that is usually what people will be following to get things set up, and it make things easy to find by organizing them by project/package/subject etc. .
_________________
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Help_improve_Gentoo_by_getting_involved_with_documentation!
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ris

[midnite]

Newbie impression of wiki editing:

I have been using Gentoo for a few years, but I am 100% newbie to Wiki editing. For me, it is not very convenient that every edit to a wiki page is logged. It would be handier if I could keep drafts private. Once the draft is ready, the author chooses to publish it. It is fine that all published versions are logged. Online readers can track all previous versions. (This is because the drafts may contain some stupid content.) I know that this can be done by the author saving the draft to a private location (e.g. local text files, or Google Keep). But it is not convenient. Of course I know this is just my issue. May I ask how do most wiki editors handle their drafts?

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Hi Ris_,

Thank you very much for your kindly reply with many information.

The mw-collapsible in your link is nice.

If I remember correctly, Gentoo code blocks (i.e. {{Invocation}} and {{RootInvocation}}, reference here) did not have the [Expand] / [Collapse] options back then a few years ago. I guess it would not be hard to implement the same formatting for other types of blocks, or even to any content div. However, if there are too many expand/collapse handles, it may render the page too complex or difficult to read otherwise, we may need some advice from UI and UX experts.

In fact, the current Gentoo wiki format, with a table of contents, is neat. It would be nicer if Gentoo wiki could implement a sidebar table of contents, just like the "new" Wikipedia layout design. This is convenient enough for readers.

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Hi NeddySeagoon,

Thank you for confirming the information. Thank for your continued efforts in maintaining the site.

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Hi pietinger,

Yea I do remember discussing some IT security topics with you. It is my great honour that you remember me too. Sadly I stopped working on Gentoo for over a year. I hope to carry on my studies and reach some milestones shortly.

I like your contributions especial the Kernel Hardening with KSPP and Installation Guide for Paranoid Dummies. For sure I would love to share my studies with you when they are ready.
_________________
- midnite.

[NeddySeagoon]

midnite,

I do the high level structure and thought map in a text file with nano and gather some of the commands and outputs.

Compare https://bpa.st/AJGQ from 21-Oct-23 with the 'live' version at https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:NeddySeagoon/Raspberry_PI_Install_Guide
The Wiki page needs some testing before it's ready for the main wiki.

It does not need to be complete. I've put a header in for Wifi Firmware annotated TODO.
As I don't use WiFi on my Pi's, its unlikely I'll do it. That's fine, others will add it.

Don't worry about silly mistakes. They will be added by well intentioned others, with less knowledge that yourself, soon enough.
It's not really your page, it's the Wikis page, started by you.

e.g. Whet the Pi4 was new I started https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi4_64_Bit_Install. Look back over the history https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Raspberry_Pi4_64_Bit_Install&dir=prev&action=history and see how its changed.
Four years or, it's no longer anything like my original, but that's a Wiki at work.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[midnite]

Hi NeddySeagoon,

[NeddySeagoon]

midnite,

There is a difference between my user page and all the sub-pages that started life there.
We need ris_ to tell us how private top level user pages are.

Some of those pages were never finished, others were moved to the main wiki.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[flexibeast]

[Moderator edit: I have merged this post to this thread as requested by flexibeast -- pietinger]

i wrote a reply yesterday, but kept getting "Error in posting" messages when trying to post it; getting up just now, i see @ris_ has answered. A couple of things from my original reply to add to that:

* When working on page(s) locally, rather than on the wiki itself, you can still use the Web UI to check how your content looks via the 'Preview' functionality. If you don't actually save the page, but only preview it, the page won't be created or publicly available.

* Even though it will still be publicly available, you could save your work on the wiki under a 'draft' directory on the wiki, to indicate that it's content that's not yet finalised. This is what i've done with my major overhaul of the S6 page, User:Flexibeast/drafts/S6; it's waiting on review.

[miket]

[midnite]