September Dreamwidth Documentation Suggestions Thread

[ivorygates]

This is the September thread for suggesting new FAQs, suggesting changes to existing FAQs, posting errors in existing FAQs, and for changes to/additions to/errors in site copy which is not FAQs.

Comments

[zvi]

Looking at this discussion about how to sort styles, I see lots of people with no ideas of the basics of DW styles, like: all (most?) of our layouts are fluid, some of our layouts let you override the number of columns, how to change colors, how to change the sidebar width, etc.

These are all things easily controlled in the wizards, and people are very grumpy they can't sort the styles to find them that way.

[cesy]

If it's any help, I did a really basic draft beginner's guide to styles - feel free to suggest improvements to that, or use it as the basis for an official guide, or link it places.

[cesy]

Can we add a couple of examples to http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=169 ?

For instance, explain that [font size=20px] can be replaced with [span style="font-size:20px;"], and similar things.

Subscription filters

[cesy]

Are you already drafting a FAQ on subscription filters?

The fact that the format to use them is read/filtername rather than read?filter=filtername or anything else should probably go in it.

Moderation queue

[cesy]

Can we document the limit on entries in the moderation queue, please? I think there's both a total limit per community and a per-poster+community-combination limit. Both should probably be mentioned in the FAQ on moderated posting.

There was a Support request about this a while ago, which includes the limits: http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/see_request.bml?id=2289

It's also a difference between paid and free communities, so should be listed in the paid benefits FAQ, I think.

Re: Moderation queue

[azurelunatic]

Unless it's changed from LJ:

100 total for paid/perm comms
1 per user for unpaid
5 per user for paid/perm

[edit: oh, you have a link in there which has the limits, my bad]

Extra FAQs

[cesy]

There was lots of good information in today's News post (http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/11308.html). For instance, the paragraph explaining the tags in suggestions would be good to go somewhere, though possibly that should be on the profile of dw_suggestions rather than a FAQ, or possibly linked from the FAQ on making suggestions.

Clicking the layout name to see all colour themes for that layout is not well-known or obvious, so should probably go in a FAQ.

Reading filters need a FAQ, though I know they're still only in alpha so it may change. In particular, how to apply them to your reading page needs documenting.

[wyntarvox]

FAQ 109 on controlling posts to a community refers to community administrators approving/rejecting from the moderation queue, etc., where it should actually use the term 'community moderator' instead. The difference between the two is important, particularly in this FAQ, and in fact someone who is a community administrator but not a community moderator cannot access the moderation queue.

[terriko]

Could supplement the two FAQs about getting rss feeds for your dreamwidth account to include how to get feeds for just one tag (right now they explain (a) how to get a rss feed for your dreamwidth account and (b) how to change the length of the summaries included in said feed). I wrote a short writeup here when I didn't find it in the docs.

[jd]

Something about how community icons work, especially as they relate to reading pages, would be nice :)

[zvi]

If the FAQs explain how to switch between the RTE and the HTML editor, I can't find the documentation.

[zvi]

I cannot discover how to discover the OPML feed. I wound up searching the LJ faq to get it.

[av8rmike]

afuna and I were talking last night, and I mused that what we really need is a "User's Guide" to the Advanced Customization area. LJ has one in the FAQs, but she told me we can't copy those and to post here. At the moment, there is no simple and general documentation on Dreamwidth for how to use the advanced area, only tutorials people have written for specific ends.

Official communities

[cesy]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=65 doesn't appear to mention dw_beta.

[zvi]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=98 does not make clear that if you are setting up OtherSite, you need to put in the XML-RPC url to make it work, not the base url for the site.

The field prompt at https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/externalaccount is also opague.

[zvi]

Exporting entries FAQ does not use the word backup or phrase back up and is not tagged that way, making it more difficult to find.

Also, it might be good to mention that one can back up communities in the same fashion.

[azurelunatic]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=133 probably ought to have alt text on the icons even though it's primarily to illustrate for sighted users, as it's still an expanded definition.

[wyntarvox]

As suggested by cygnet here, it might be an idea to document the http://www.dreamwidth.org/interface/atom/post URL (the API endpoint for external sites to use to post to a DW account) somewhere.

[cesy]

(From http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1809)

"If a user attempts to check the moderation queue for a community which does not have moderated posting (such as by typing in the URL manually), the error message which comes up is that the user is not a maintainer of the comm. I think what it actually means is that the user is not a moderator of the comm, since there's no queue it's not possible to set a moderator.

"The queue link actually appears on some of the settings pages regardless of moderation settings; this might be something where we want it to only appear in conditional circumstances, but I'd settle for getting a better error message."

"The misleading error message part of this is a job for the site copy team. The string is set to the following by default in the code:

You do not moderate the community [[comm]].

"On the live site though, the site copy team have overwritten it to the current form via the translate system."

Post by email

[cesy]

As per discussion here, the new DW commands for post-by-email need documenting in a FAQ.

[ninetydegrees]

I had to go back to LJ to find http://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/emailmanage.bml. I know I can't delete my old address as it hasn't been six months yet but I wanted to check the date since I couldn't remember it so may this be documented somewhere? #48 was the place where I expected to find it.

[hermitty]

As there isn't an October thread, I'm going to post this here. I was looking at http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=155 that provides a list of the HTML tags that can be used on DW. There seems to be a closing tag missing for the 'sup' tag example. Actually I just looked and there's an opening tag, a second opening tag midway through the example sentence and only one closing tag.

[ivorygates]

now *that* I can fix...

[afuna]

For http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=86 could have a line that importing from the same journal twice will only import new entries/comments/friendsgroups/tags, etc, and not duplicate the existing ones.

[ivorygates]

wow cool! is that true? [silly question, i know, but is this a tweak of the importer? it didn't work that way in May...]

[afuna]

Yup, we only import entries or comments we haven't seen before. Unfortunately this means we can't see edits (yet)

We had two bugs which resulted in duplication: crossposts getting imported as new entry, and (IIRC) duplicating imports in some circumstances. Both are fixed now though! (And the first is already documented).

[ivorygates]

oooooooooo yay! and the FAQ is tweaked!

[afuna]

Yay! Looks great thank you \o/

[ninetydegrees]

#120, #60 and #61 use the word 'maintainer' and, checking community settings and profiles, I've realized 'maintainer' is the word used on LJ: DW uses 'administrator'. So these FAQs need to be updated, I think.

Edit: #106 et #10 also use the word 'maintain' instead of 'administer'.

Edit2: it's also used on several site pages/error messages. Create Community to name one.

[ninetydegrees]

FAQ#125 says Network isn't available yet. It is. FAQ#153 and FAQ#4 don't mention it as a paid benefit either. Also FAQ#4 has outdated userpic numbers.

[afuna]

One more tweak, related to the importer faq (http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=86)

"Crossposted and duplicate entries will be detected and won't be imported." -- just got pointed out to me that we should make it clear that comments for crossposted entries get imported. That basically, crossposted entries will not be duplicated upon import; comments on crossposted entries will be imported and merged with those on the original entry on DW.

[yvi]

It would be great to have an FAQ about the sticky entry setting (what it is, how to set it). People are getting confused because the logs etc. call it a module when it isn't.

[afuna]

I hope this is the right place for this -- I'd like to suggest tweaking the text of the "Manage accounts" link in http://dreamwidth.org/update to "Manage crosspost" or "Crossposting settings", or similar, to make it more obvious that it deals with crossposting.

I've seen some people overlook it when they're trying to figure out how to set up a crosspost footer, etc.

ETA: Is done now. Much thanks!

Missing in FAQ 103

[pauamma]

FAQ 103 doesn't mention <del> in the list of allowed tags. It also doesn't mention that some tags (such as <del>) can be used in the entry body but not the subject. (I couldn't find another FAQ that did, and if there's one, they should IMO link to each other.)

Re: Missing in FAQ 103

[cesy]

This should probably go to Support or straight into Bugzilla, now docs has moved there.

Re: Missing in FAQ 103

[denise]

Nope, small changes still go in dw_docs, although this isn't the most recent thread for it.

Re: Missing in FAQ 103

[pauamma]

My bad. I went straight for the tags page instead of the journal. *goes link*