User:BrentNewland

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Revision as of 03:37, 6 March 2012 by BrentNewland (talk | contribs) (Created page with "*Right now I'm starting by going through every changelog and adding the information to each file page (as best I can) to establish a brief official history. I am also adding a li…")
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  • Right now I'm starting by going through every changelog and adding the information to each file page (as best I can) to establish a brief official history. I am also adding a link to the revision log for every file.
  • Next, once I've worked my way up to the 0.3.14 changelog, I will go filepage by filepage, determining exactly what that file does, including a detailed explanation, what components it fits into, any external references,a rostests list, and any current bugs (see Explorer.exe for an example bug list).
  • This should have wide-ranging benefits not just to ReactOS but to the Windows community as a whole. If you google for most Windows Files, you find a lot of junk out there that's not helpful. By including quality information, the ReactOS google rank should go up, then links to the wiki should go up, and the project will get more attention and visitors.
  • This is a little more forward thinking, but if it works as well as I hope, I've been thinking of ways to make the Wiki more useful for developers - perhaps a link in the source code folder for components which have a page in the wiki (e.g. a "explorer.roswiki" file in /trunk/reactos/base/shell/explorer/ with the contents "http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Explorer.exe", the user could have their browser open it by default); Some ways the Wiki could be more useful:
    • Developers could post reminders and notes on the Wiki
    • Links to good references
    • Status of that component
    • TODO lists
    • Plus each page would include any bugs it could find and quick links to the history
    • Think of the Wiki as the one-stop shop for everyone
  • Also, the Wiki is pretty light on material and cross-links (internal and external). It's not always easy to navigate to the ViewVC page, or the SVN HTMl interface, or other important pages (but hopefully that will change with the website overhaul).

My heavy editing will only last for a few weeks (hopefully), and then I'll just make regular changes. Unfortunately the Wiki has been somewhat neglected. Here are some changes I've made:

  • Put almost every page (except ones I'm working on right now) into a category of some sort (would love to see This page in the sidebar)
  • Incorporated content from various sources into the wiki (various FAQ's, about pages, info pages, some forum posts)
  • Cleaned up and combined/separated the ReactOS_ports page and category
  • Cleaned up and combined/optimised the File Systems page and category
  • Added cross-links to the outdated Version_Status page (without changing any of the statuses)
  • Added some anchors to People of ReactOS and redirects for people who had been linked to elsewhere in the wiki but had no page (broken links)
  • Recovered and recreated ChangeLog-0.2.2 and ChangeLog-0.2.3
  • Cleaned up the ReactOS subsystems page and category
  • Created the Frameworks page, which has important frameworks you might need to install to run some programs
  • Recreated the FAQ

And here's what I plan to do:

  • Go through every newsletter and add/link to any useful information
  • Go through the entire forum and incorporate any useful information into the wiki
  • Add lots more helpful tutorials
    • A completely new user to ReactOS should have a guide available that will walk them through anything they want to do - download the latest release, which one to download (the differences between dbg and dbgwin are not explained), installing it, installing a virtual machine if needed, exactly how to report a bug, exactly how to get a backtrace and anything else needed to file a proper report (I still don't know how to get raddr2line, seems like you may have to compile it yourself, and a fresh user will be turned away almost immediately by having to compile something)
  • Provide as much cross-linking as possible to lead users to new content
  • Update every page at least once initially and periodically thereafter
    • Even if I have to sit in the IRC channel and ask the same question over and over and over
    • Unless it was a one-off thing or is only there for historical purposes
  • Everything possible to make this Wiki as awesome as possible with as much relevant and up to date information as possible
  • Document every aspect of ReactOS, its components, its status, its GUI, missing features, the API, and all the suggestions and ideas I can find (excluding ridiculous ones)