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Features / Usability

Features / Usability


Re: A more friendly "create a new page" option?

posts: 4656 Japan

> In the document page about Using Wiki pages:
>
> http://doc.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=23
>
> ricks99 stated: "The current TIKI concept of how to create a new page is very confusing to new users — you have to already be editing an existing wiki page in order to create a new one. This is (IMHO) very anti-user friendly.

The advantage is that in this way wiki pages are linked; there are no orphan pages. The problem with a "create wiki page form" is that, while it might ease new users' creation of pages, it shifts the problem to one of navigation, finding the created pages again, etc.

> Indeed, he was quite correct. His suggestions are OK. I finally understood how to do it, but still took me quite sometime to figure out by trial and error.
>
> The quick_edit option he suggested requires familiarity with the menus and modules, unless it is one of the default module or already incorporated in the Wiki folder (inside the Menu). Moreover, the quick_edit option should not use the Homepage wiki page as the default page.

The quick edit module (or using the editpage URL) is handy but means the user is prepared to provide menu links to the page, rely on "last wiki changes" list to find the page again, or use some other navigation mechanism that is, if anything, more difficult than simply putting a pagename/link in an existing known page, it seems to me.

> The second option about mashed words or use of the My New Page requires a familiarity with the Wiki syntax that you get comfortable with only after a time — because it was quite counter to what you are used to with HTML.

Wiki syntax is fundamental to a wiki site, so I think the user should be expected to learn it, at least the basics, at the very beginning. Wikis are tool, and new tools have to be learned to be used. The learning curve can be gentle, but it can't be horizontal, and I suggest the first step upward is knowing how to make a link in a wiki page.

> For example, how do you deal with links that have different content but should appear to have the same link name in a table of contents?
>
> It was much easier for me to use the Articles section because it has a simple "Submit Article" option. Why can't something as simple as that be made as the initial default page — for creating a new Wiki page. Maybe, it should even come with examples already, and cal it creating your "first trial Wiki page?

It'd be easy enough for the new Tiki installation to have a little content on the default ))HomePage((, explaining how to make links and new pages. But I think new users should be encouraged to use conventional wiki syntax to make new pages, not given mechanisms that might just shift the problem or delay necessary learning.

-- Gary (zukakakina.com)

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