Transition guidelines

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You can help us and speed up the process by participating in creation of a new wiki that will replace the current one. See Transition guidelines for more details.

The Transition Guidelines describe essential steps to be followed in order to ensure a smooth and efficient wiki transition.

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to cover transition procedures and establish quality guidelines.

That means, how to decide which articles to migrate or delete, which to upgrade to meet new quality standards (from a usability, design, formulation and conceptual perspective), apply the new article template to ensure consistent design, then implement article migration to the new wiki.

Note that guide is marked as "Working DRAFT".
We will improve procedure as we stumble on problems and to lower load on everyone involved in transition, so keep an eye on changes.

To do that you can either check History of this page , or add this page to the list of your watched pages using link Watch. Both links are provided above this article title in line with Page Discussion Edit History ... For history you don't have to be logged in, but for Watched you have to. To check changes later you can use My watchlist link that is in line with Login/Logout, and it is present only when you are logged in.

None of the changes will be retroactive. That means there will be no mandatory fixes of already reviewed pages.

Transition Guide

Step 0 : Preparation

The preparations for the transition are done, the new wiki instance, namespaces, guidelines and initial portals are set up.

Step 1 : Articles review

Prior moving old wiki content to the new instance, we must check that articles follow established standards and rules. We will go through every page to check whether its quality against the rules below. Due to the huge number of articles to be checked, all help will be appreciated.

For every wiki article, the reviewer has to do following steps (details follow):

Check the content of the article
Check the format of the article
If the content or format does not follow the style rules, edit as required
Mark the article as checked in the Transition list table .

After these steps are done, the wiki administrators (not the reviewer) will migrate the article to new wiki instance.

Choosing an article

Have a look at the Transition list table which contains articles to be reviewed.
Select an article that is not marked In review,
Put your sign in the column Reviewer with ~~~, which will be automatically converted to your sign,
Put mark In review in the Status column and work on it.

With Transition list table there is no need for any template in the article body, with the exception of Template:InReview as information to casual editors that someone works on the article. You can use other templates, but that is not mandatory:

"review done" template - Template:Reviewed
"won't be transfered" Template - Template:NoTransfer
"article transfered" Template - Template:TransferNote

Content check

Check that the document

Is openSUSE relevant
Is not actually obsolete

How will one know the article is "obsolete" ?
- Check if the article is related to obsolete technology (ie, ZMD, ...)
- In doubt, ask a wiki team members on IRC or on the openSUSE-wiki mailing list, or ask for help in the Status column and add remark in Comment column.
- If the article is obsolete, just mark is as such in the Status column of the Transition list table, and go to another.

Format check

Ensure the document

Follows the required format as defined by openSUSE:Wiki Style Guidelines
Uses capitalization rules similar to Wikipedia.
- Replace instances of "SUSE Linux", "openSUSE®", "openSuSE" and other variations with a correctly capitalized and formatted "openSUSE". Exceptions are those historical articles wherein it would be correct to refer to (for example) "SuSE 6.4" or "SUSE Linux 10.1".
- Change capitalization of title page by moving the article to the new name. (use Template:Lowercase title if necessary)
- Check capitalization of Internal links, and move related articles the same way.
- Change sections and headers capitalization to comply with the style guide.
Does not duplicate information that is developed somewhere else in the wiki, but links to this information (make good use of the "Knowledge" information)
Follows the openSUSE:Article Template
Uses standardized Templates only. See openSUSE:Wiki_Template_Guidelines for the main templates to be used.
Check internal links. Avoid pointing to redirect link, point to proper article directly.
Check external links. Update/delete them if necessary

If the document isn't fixable (e.g. not openSUSE relevant), put the mark No transfer in Status column of Transition list table
- If it is fixable, but the reviewer can not fix it for whatever reason, ask for assistance by putting Need expert, asking on IRC, or openSUSE-wiki mailing list.

Marking the article as checked

After you have checked the article and fixed all issues, mark the article as Transfer.
Doing so you will inform the wiki administrators that the article has passed QA and so they may move it to new wiki.
Don't rush with articles that need serious fixes. Wiki admins will anyway go trough articles that are marked for transfer, and ask for assistance, or changes if article doesn't look right.

You can now choose another article in the Transition List.

See also

Communicate

Please use the -wiki mailing list, #opensuse-wiki IRC channel and Wiki_Team/Message_Board as information exchange platforms.

Step 2 : Transition

Cleaning

Delete all test pages in new instance wiki.o.o (except user pages)

Wiki

Migrate the openSUSE:Wiki Guidelines
Migrate the standardized Template

Portal

Migrate initial portals project and wiki

Migration

Ensure that title capitalization is lowercase
Use a navigation bar if required (TO DO: some explanation)
- Replace actual navBar with categoryTree structure (?)
Ensure that articles are correctly categorized (TO DO: link to list of available/supported categories would help)
...

Respect the new defined structure (See http://wiki.opensuse.org/Help:Namespace for the new namespaces)
Categorize the article
Mark the article in the old wiki as "Migred" with Template:TransferNote
Flag the current version as "Quality Article"
Shall we allow modification in the new instance when the articles have been transfered ? (probably, as migration will take a few weeks).

Step 3 : After transition

Localized wiki

Define with local wiki teams which wiki will be migrated or deleted
Let local team migrate their wiki

The review process is outlined here: http://wiki.opensuse.org/Help:Page_validation