JavapediaWorkshop2004Notes

Below are some ideas people had at our recent Javapedia Workshop and Community Meeting. Please add others to it or help us refine these.

• Javapedia in different languages. We need technology that when you state what language you want it displayed in, which will route to the correct page (the right language), and marks on the page to say what languages have yet to be translated to.
  • JUGS can be enlisted to help out
• Putting real Java doc here. If Java goes open source, this would make more sense. This would act as an attractor to Javapedia.
• Harvest java.net for Javapedia pages.
• Put text formatting rule summary at the bottom of the editing page. This came up because some thought Twiki was too hard to use
  • put instructions on how to add a new page - this is currently unclear (done added a link on the Javapedia home page to CreateANewPage.)
• Sister wikis for projects. This would enable projects to name pages what they want, but allows for people to stumble into each other.
• Make an easy way to make suggestions.
• Make a "Catalog" topic, call it something like yellow pages. Probably "Products" is not inclusive enough. What does this have to do with JavapediaCataloging?
• We need to rethink the Javapedia home page. Do we need a special editor or is this the job of the community manager?
• Recently updated pages list on the Javapedia home page. This can also mention who made the change, as advertsing for them.
• Should we collaborate with Wikipedia? They have a lot of Java articles, but they don't go to great depth.

Discussion about JavapediaWorkshop2004Notes

I would really like to see Javapedia switch from CamelCase to the free links format supported by Wikipedia. Anyone who edits on Wikipedia will find the CamelCase link format rather cumbersome (Wikipedia originally used CamelCase but switched to free links). Might be able to attract some of the Wikipedia editors on the Java articles to this site, if Javapedia supported the same formatting syntax. I guess the followup question is why doesn't Javapedia use the same software as Wikipedia? -- Main.redwolf - 08 Jul 2004

I like the idea of putting the real java doc into a wiki. Any tips/tricks/examples/articles related to a particular method in the API, could be added by people. This could be a very useful reference resource. Look up the basic javadoc syntax info (as every java programmer is used to doing), and find lots of useful extra info alongside. -- Main.harrywood - 29 Oct 2004

I'm not really sure what the role of rhetoric is in the Javapedia.

There's lots of things that 'get my goat', frameworks that are more effort than they are worth being near the top of the list at the moment.

I like simplicity (but not over simplifying things), and don't like unneccessary complications. A lot of the 'gee whiz' frameworks seem to take simple things and make them very complicated.

At times I feel like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness. The question is, is the Javapedia the right wilderness?

Wikis, after all, are probably not great respectors of minority opinions... (interesting meta-question: should wikis be there to build consensus, or challenge the status quo/sacred cows? - It seems to me that a wiki might be a good place to build consensus ('rebels' can go off and build their 'anti' pages (eg Patterns and Anti-Patterns)). Do things which are clearly 'opinions' have any place in a tool for centralising knowledge - should the distinction between knowledge and opinions be made more obvious?)

-- rickcarson - 01 Dec 2004