A suggestion for automatic categories for wiki pages...

[Mark Aitchison]

Taking a random page like https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Administration_Guide_Draft/NFS I

notice there are several obvious (and some not-so-obvious) indications that the page is 
out of date.  I think it would be a good idea, and probably can be done automatically for

the most part, to have a clear indication of the state (score?) of each wiki page to 
indicate how valid and up to date it probably is. That indication should be a clear box 
at the top, and (if the page is so out of date that it may be unusable) it could change 
the background to (say) some shade of pink.

These are the things that could be checked automatically:

 1. uses a command or suggests installing a package that doesn't exist in the latest
    release (other than in a section clearly headed for "Older Versions")
 2. uses a command (like yum) that is deprecated/out-dated (that might include any
    system-config-xyz options since they seem to be disappearing?)
 3. does not have a section on testing the changes that have been made (if the advice had
    included "edit" or "install" anywhere).
 4. the latest release of Fedora mentioned anywhere on the page is over 2 years old.

There should also be a clear feedback method on each page (like "This answered my 
question"/"This didn't tell me everything I needed to know"/"This
did not work for my 
system"/"I think it could be done or said more simply"/"The page
misses some important 
(e.g. security) issue" plus an option to be contacted for more details. That should
also 
(after human checking) make it's way into the page's "usefulness score".
 And there 
should be a ranked list of pages needing "some love" with an indication of just
how in 
need of attention they are, so pages don't remain out of date too long.

Related to that, and something that could (like Wikipedia, etc) be automatically checked 
and made obvious to editors), there should be some sections on most pages in a standard 
format, e.g.:

  * a subsection "Documentation checked up to release nnn"
  * a subsection "Older versions" describing differences for users of earlier
releases.
  * instructions on what firewall changes are needed (if none say so for any page
    mentioning installing anything or changing any system option/file)
  * a "For example" section
  * a "Checking your changes" section
  * a "Security implications" section
  * a "Why you might not want to do this" section(!!), for example saying there
are other
    ways to do the same thing, or how much performance hit you might get, or how things
    may freeze for a while if another system is down, or security worries, etc.  And it
    shouldn't just list options (e.g. no_subtree_check) it should either say why to
    choose/disable the important ones, and perhaps link to some page with a discussion -
    perhaps forum-linked.

and ways to link to the pages that we can be pretty sure will stay valid for a long 
time... e.g. if the page has a quick explanation of how to allow SELinux or a firewall to

allow the changes to work, but you want to link to more detailed instructions on another 
page, then that link should stay valid for a long time. Maybe a way, even, for editors to

say "this page depends on this link", although it should be possible to work
this out 
automatically and warn any person editing editing the linked page if it will break links 
from other pages.

Thoughts?
Mark Aitchison