Danbooru

Wiki Improvement Hotline

Posted under Bugs & Features

Wiki Improvement Hotline
Updated!
Formerly: Danbooru Wiki and Help Improvement Suggestions

Welcome! This thread was originally made in 2010, as a place for opinions on how the Wiki help can be improved.

The goals are to improve the Wiki help so that:

  • It is easy to read and understand.
  • It clearly defines Danbooru's purpose, policy and content standards.
  • It clearly explains Danbooru's features, capabilities, limitations and how it works.

The Wiki help can be divided into the following concerns:

  • Lurker's Guides to introduce new users to how this site works.
  • Tutorials that explain in detail on how to use Danbooru's features.
  • Rules and Terms of Service related wikis.
Previously on The Wiki

September 25th, 2013

Right before this thread was started, I had been a lurker until I learned about Danbooru's manual mod queue and the plight of the moderators of having to deal with an overwhelming backlog of status:pending and minimally-tagged Posts in an old Danbooru 1 thread. I wanted to make moderation process easier, and I thought if we had a better upload and tagging guides, uploaders and taggers will understand and start uploading better art and tagging their uploads. Did the new wikis help? I leave you to be the judge.

One thing led to another and then I had this plan was to expand the help wikis into a multi-part guide (the parts were the Lurker Guides, Contributor Guides, Terms of Service, Feature Help, Developer Guide and Knowledge Base). As of today the wiki help is much smaller that what I had originally planned, but I hope this is for the better.

So far, Lurker and Contributor Guides have been done. I rewrote some of the existing help wikis, and ended up creating some new ones, like the Tag Checklist. help:home was given a facelift, and some of the important help wikis that were hidden are now out in the open. Some of the wikis may be due for a rewrite, due to things like obsolete references, and the lack of references to more current issues and changes.

There were also improvements that I did not do, such as howto:pools (jjj14) and the wikification of help pages that were formerly in static pages (Toks), so thanks to you guys and girls (if there are any :3).

The Developer Guide will not be finished anytime soon, due to the amount of Ruby and Rails I will have to learn before getting into writing about Danbooru's internals. If you feel like writing developer docs, you're all welcome to start before I do!

The following parts of the original plan will not be done, because I think they aren't very suitable for a wiki:

  • Knowledge Base - Wiki containing a list of useful threads and important issues from the forum will be kept. This was because I found the forum search in Danbooru 1 nearly unusuable. Danbooru 2 made the forum somewhat easier to use with its categories, although forum search remains less that easy. I think improving forum search will be a better way than having to constantly maintain a manual knowledgebase.
  • Feature Help - A humongous guide describing every feature (or function) in detail, including what they do and how they work. I realized that my approach wasn't as effective or efficient as I thought. Danbooru's codebase keeps changing as new features are added and old ones are fixed, and my approach was particularly bad at adapting for these changes.

Finally, I want to thank those who helped out, and continue to help out: glasnost, jxh2154, junnigatsu_no_usagi, Cyberia-Mix, albert, kounishin, and everyone else who will post suggestions in this thread.

Updated

Wiki Front Page Redesign

Today I shall start off with the front page of Danbooru's Wiki. I think it looks a little too much like a college lecturer's read-or-die list. I am suggesting that the Wiki front page be made into something more structured, like this:

Welcome to Danbooru!
Something to describe Danbooru in 50 words or less goes here.
"Danbooru is a database of high-quality anime art and doujin from various artists around the world."

Newbie Survival Guide
Thi section will be a quick reference for new users, or when wanting to look up on a feature fast

Browsing and Searching

  • Searching for Posts
  • ...

User Accounts

  • Introduction to accounts
  • Creating an account
  • ...

Forums

  • Starting a topic
  • Important Forum Topic Knowledgebase
  • ...

Uploading

  • Upload Process
  • What Danbooru Wants: Image Approval Criteria
  • ...

Terms of Use and Etiquette

  • Commenting in Forums
  • Spoiler Policy
  • ...

Danbooru User Guide (for lurkers)
A feature-by-feature help section goes here...

  • Account
  • Posts
  • Comments
  • Notes
  • Artists
  • Tags
  • Pools
  • Search Cheat Sheet
  • ...

Glossary of Danbooru Tags

  • List of Tag Groups
  • List of Memes
  • ...

Developer Guide

  • API
  • Programming
  • ...

Due to the lack of tables, I will have to write this one carefully so that it fits on one page. New wiki pages may have to be created if there are enough poorly documented features.

glasnost said: Looks good to me. Also, the consensus is that the non-wiki help should also be moved over to the wiki, as updating it is apparently a low-priority task for albert; you might want to crib text from that for some sections rather than re-writing from scratch.

Yes, all help files should be on the wiki. There's at least one change I've wanted to make for a while.

Current Phase: (keine0)
Templates, The Establishment of the Five Guides, Knowledgebase and Table of Contents
Last Edit: 2010-08-20

Todo List:
  • Introduction of Wiki Templates (done 2010-08-17, in beta)
    • They will have a prefix of template:
    • The aim is to have convenient copy-pasta pages that will help contributors get started on new Wiki pages.
    • They also aim to keep the Danbooru Wiki's pages to a standard look
    • Bonus: they contain mini hints to remind Wiki writers on the art of Danbooru wiki writing.
  • Addition of the Table of Contents (done 2010-08-19, in alpha)
    • Similar to Help>Help Topics in well-documented Mac and Windows apps.
    • Easy way of looking up a specific help topic within the Five Guides [1].
  • Complete Contributor Guide (in progress 2010-08-20)
    • Aims to give a clear guide to Danbooru standards in the Posts and the Wiki.
    • Aims to give a clear guide to using features important to contributors, including Firefox addons.
    • Finishing contributor guide first, important because the Wiki editing will become easier with those templates up and standards defined.
      • Also meant to ease the workload on Janitors, Mods and Admins, because uploaders will know what pictures are wanted, and what aren't.
  • Addition of the Forum Knowledge Base
    • Offers a list of hot forum threads for frequently asked questions and frequently encountered issues.
    • Sorted by Categories.

[1] The Five Guides are the Lurker Guide, Contributor Guide, Developer Guide, Feature Help and the Terms of Service

  • Front Page improvements are ongoing throughout the Wiki rewrite.

Updated

Cyberia-Mix said:
Haven't looked at your changes yet but I go wiki >> tag groups all the time, and this extra step hurts a lot, both time and visibility wise. I really really think the tag groups link is needed on the main page.

Got you covered. Added Quick Links to the main wiki page. Click on tag_groups to get to the tag_groups page.

Thanks for raising this issue, because the tag_group page isn't very easy to get to without a direct link. We just have a search, but no jump. I think we should have a wiki jump feature soon.

Something about the different kinds of wiki pages:

Firstly, we have: general, copyright, artist and character. All of them are understood.

But I need some help on the use of about, help and howto. But from my understanding:

  • about: is to introduce a single feature on Danbooru.
  • help: are for basic primers, instructions on things such as merely searching, commenting and adding notes.
  • howto: is for detailed, multi-step guides on processes that make use of multiple features on Danbooru, AND other sites. Examples are uploading, translating challenges and finding artists.
    • howto: is also used for quality guidelines (like howto:wiki)

Finally, there is template:, which I created, to make starting wiki entries a little easier...

honestly I preferred the short version, but I guess I can get use to this.

Can you do a pointing arrow at the end of these tags and tell me which pages you are putting these on? So I can get use to it faster.

unicogirl said: honestly I preferred the short version, but I guess I can get use to this.

Yeah, I do think it needed to be rearranged but I had a hell of a time finding one of the pages when I wanted to link a help file. I'd be interested in getting a quick rundown of where everything went as well so I don't need to reread it all.

unicogirl said:
honestly I preferred the short version, but I guess I can get use to this.

Can you do a pointing arrow at the end of these tags and tell me which pages you are putting these on? So I can get use to it faster.

  • Uploading images -> Contributor Guide - How to Upload
  • Tagging images -> Contributor Guide - How to Tag
  • Writing Wiki entries -> Contributor Guide - Quick Guide on Writing Wiki Entries
  • Commenting on images -> Contributor Guide - Comments - Rules and Guidelines [new]
  • Rating images (safe, questionable, explicit) -> Contributor Guide - Rating, Rules and Guidelines [new]
  • Artist entries (and specifically Pixiv artist entries)
    • Artist entries -> Contributor Guide - Artists [new]
    • Specifically Pixiv artist entries -> Contributor Guide - Pixiv Artists
  • Translating -> Contributor Guide - How To Translate
  • About the Moderation Queue -> Contributor Guide - Moderation Queue
  • About appealing deleted images -> Contributor Guide - Appealing Deleted Images
  • About positive/negative user records -> Contributor Guide - User Records

[new] These links were added to the page because they were missing. Me bad.

Now, I've also added more Quick Links that will hold out until I finish the Contributor Guide, so here we go again:

* Uploading images -> Posts, Uploading
* Tagging images -> Tags, Tagging Guidelines
* Writing Wiki entries -> Wiki, Writing Wiki Entries
* Commenting on images -> Comments, Commenting Guidelines
* Rating images (safe, questionable, explicit) -> Posts, Rating Guidelines
* Artist entries (and specifically Pixiv artist entries) -> Artists, Artists
* Pixiv artist entries -> Artists, Pixiv Artists
* Translating -> Notes, Translations
* About the Moderation Queue -> Moderation, Moderation Queue
* About appealing deleted images -> Moderation, Deletion Appeals
* About positive/negative user records -> Moderation, User Records

The quick links should cover the links on the list, until at least someone tells me...

Phase keine0, Templates are now Done!

The look and feel of new Wiki pages has been taken care of. All it takes from now on to make a readable wiki page is a little copy paste. We can now focus on writing!

The seven basic templates for:

Help Wiki Pages

  • about: (feature documentation)
  • help: (beginner help)
  • howto: (in-depth guides and guidelines)

Tags

  • artist:
  • character: (thanks jjj14)
  • copyright:
  • General

Lists

  • tag_group

They'll be accessible from the help:home Contributor's Quick Links for now, but I will touch up on a list of templates soon. Stay tuned! Need to rest up for the next wave of edits...

Phase keine0, TOC is now done

Completed the Table of Contents. This will be a guide on what's in the Five Guides. Starting with the Contributor guide next.

Some may have noticed the new Help Wanted quick links on help:home. Hope this makes the character, translation, tagging and whatnot requests known to more of us.

Another thing, I have a question about making Trac more well known, to encourage users to submit bugs rather than ignore them? Should Trac be placed in the Lurker guide, or moved to the Contributor Guide?

I'd leave Trac out temporarily, since it has a significant problem that needs addressing first. It's even semi-relevant to the topic of the thread, because that problem is that many of the Trac wiki pages contain bot-generated spam - in some cases, only bot-generated spam.

If as a new user I click on "Help/Guide", and then on "TracTickets" (since that's labelled "Using the issue tracker"), I'll end up at http://trac.donmai.us/wiki/TracTickets. As I write this, all it contains is an unpronounceable spam URL - and it's been that way for over a year, according to the page history.

Part of the problem is that the Trac wiki allows anonymous editing, but that's not all of it - there are some (probably also bot-generated) named user accounts in the history too. It would probably be a good idea to do something about this before we attract more people's attention to the Trac site.

Though there are still a few wiki pages that haven't been cleaned up, spam hasn't been issue on Trac for awhile now. There's a very simple captcha in place that seems to block most of it.

I would link to just the new ticket page. There's no need to specify a milestone or assignment. Since tickets are rare I can handle duplicates manually.

Added a new touch to the artist: template, and applied it to the wiki pages of the banned artists listed on howto:upload.

  • From now on, typing "no-post artist" (with the hyphen) into the wiki search will show all the banned artists. At least until "no-post" suddenly becomes a very common artist's handle.
  • That should hold out until a banned flag is officially implemented on the Artists Database. Just search for banned artists, or mark them prominently in the search results (strike 'em out or something). The no-post artist message will also automatically appear on every banned artist's wiki page. Expect a Trac ticket!
  • There should also be a feature for either:
    • A means of jumping straight to an artist on Artist Database from an artist: wiki page
    • Jumping straight to the Artist Database when an artist: tag is clicked on, instead of going to the artist's Wiki page. Wiki pages for artist: tags are a little redundant, as the Artist database basically covers everything artist: pages on the Wiki does, and more.

And about Trac, it'll be a while before I get there. I have a few questions to clear up which I'll ask at when the time is right.

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