User talk:David Scotson

User group pages

Hi David, I hope it's ok to combine the contents of the user group pages you created, in order to focus on the documentation of standard Moodle features. --Helen Foster 21:48, 21 February 2006 (WST)

Hello Helen. I'm confused as to whether you're asking permission or forgiveness. I thought at first you'd already combined the pages, but they still seem in place. I suppose the third option is that your asking me to make the change myself.

I had thought about asking whether MoodleDocs was intended for only for 'documentation' in the strict sense, but it appeared that the Wiki was already being used to collate and present a variety of other Moodle-related info, and that made a great deal of sense to me. Similarly to the list of big adopters I thought that one of the first steps for people new to Moodle would be to find out who's using it locally/nationally, people who would theoretically 'sell' Moodle with their success stories etc.

I kind of hoped that I'd finish writing this response and be less confused as to what you were asking, but I'm not. My best guess is that my use of several pages linked by Categories is 'polluting' the namespace for the core documentation content. If so, do you want me to collate the info onto a single page for the time being?

If so no problem, let me know and I'll get to it tomorrow afternoon. It may (hopefully) grow beyond one page later (I still have another 8 JISC user groups to add, and that's just one organisation in one country) but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. --David Scotson 04:12, 22 February 2006 (WST)

Hi David, apologies for not explaining things clearly. I was confused by the number of redirects and category pages you had created and wondered whether this was intentional or not. Please start by collating the information onto a single page. Thanks! :-) --Helen Foster 07:41, 22 February 2006 (WST)

I'll do that, but there is a method to my madness which I will explain:

redirects: the purpose of my adding the redirects is so that people get taken to the right page even if there are several equally valid titles, e.g. SMUG, Scottish Moodle User Group, Scottish Moodle User*s* Group. If people type these exact terms in the search box and click 'go' (as opposed to 'search') and the redirects are set up they all get taken to the same page automatically. If the redirects don't exist then you get taken to a page that says "there is no exact match etc." and displays the search results for the entered term. Usually one of the first few entries is going to be relevant, but it's just a little less smooth. (Note the same system applies if people enter these terms at the end of URLs).

categories: these are my favourite feature of MediaWiki, the Wikipedia has literally thousands of them which very rarely get in your way unless you are actually navigating the a subset of the hierarchy that interests you. My general feeling is the more the merrier, and criss-crossing categories would add a lot of value. We should therefore expect and plan for many Categories to be added. They also have a role to play in my next point.

wiki philosophy: I'd always read that what you leave out of a wiki is as important as what you add. Since part of the point of using a wiki is to invite community participation, it's sometimes recommended to leave things half done, to encourage people to jump in and finish it off. This applies to stub pages, links that don't go anywhere, and to a certain extent not worrying about the quality of your English (particularly if it's not your first language) as all these things present opportunities for others to join in, while on the other hand editing or adding to a tight core of well written documentation may seem intimidating as a first step to someone with only a little time or information to offer. Categories are important pointers in this direction as seeing a list of UK user groups would surely prompt others to add their own countries, at some point you begin to feel left out if your country isn't listed. And the same occurs within each country as each User Group doesn't want to be left out. I thought that because people feel a sense of ownership of their user groups they would therefore feel comfortable writing the pages about them. Also because of the kind of people that are involved in them, I thought they would be ideal first steps for the kind of people who should be editing MoodleDocs. Once they've got that first page under their belt then further participation should be easy. --David Scotson 18:56, 22 February 2006 (WST)

Hi David, thanks for your explanation - much appreciated :-) --Helen Foster 01:05, 23 February 2006 (WST)

Marking pages for deletion

I've moved the info into a single page called list of user groups but I'm confused about how to mark the old pages for deletion --David Scotson 19:15, 22 February 2006 (WST)

I see you've noticed that Template:Delete is yet to be created ;-) --Helen Foster 01:05, 23 February 2006 (WST)

Thank you

Hi Dave, just wanted to say how interesting your user page is - a big thank you for your contributions to Moodle Docs :-) --Helen Foster 19:27, 28 April 2006 (WST)

Hi David, ditto Helen's comments. Was waiting for a video meeting to start and looked at a Special file "most links" or something like that for the first time. Clicked on your site. Really appreciated your "what I have learned". I agree

• Lists are good
• KISS in prose (making very liberal use of links) is a noble goal and
• Screenshots (well sized) to meet the need of visual learners are nice final touches

Did you forget the joys of technical writing in english in a cross cultural evironment? :)--Chris collman 11:47, 4 December 2006 (CST)

Moodle Docs stats

Re. Statistics for registered users, I recall Eloy mentioning a bug resulting in the stats not updating properly ;-) I don't know if it's been fixed yet. --Helen Foster 19:31, 28 April 2006 (WST)

Update: I've used Eloy's work-around for updating registered users. --Helen Foster 18:30, 18 July 2006 (WST)

Great stuff, I wasn't sure whether the integration with Moodle.org was throwing the number out. 3.5K registered users is pretty good going --David Scotson 19:10, 18 July 2006 (WST)

Etiquette violation apology

Hi David, Hope you don't mind. Thought I would throw in some current stats. Number analysis can be obsessive but it is fun. --Chris collman 06:59, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Module page names

Just thinking that it seems a good plan to rename module pages to Whatever module (e.g. Wiki module) in the same way that block pages have been renamed Whatever block. Thanks for your suggestion :-) --Helen Foster 19:17, 8 May 2006 (WST)