MediaWikiRecovery
 Translation |
Do not translate this page into other languages. It is either low priority, too specific or incomplete. | e |
This page is thought to give some instructions on how to help working on the Wiki recovery. As it has been written very quickly, it may have some errors, but as it is not one of the content pages, I think this shouldn't be a problem, as long as what is written here is understandable.
Objectives of Wiki recovery
By recovering the Wiki content we want to acheive the following:
- recovery as much as possible
- reinstate reliable content
- prevent content for all system versions against loose it
- clean/verify/update wiki content
- make wiki better and easier than it was before
- make wiki actual documentation for Shareaza
Rules for recovering
Our goal is to restore as much of content as possible. If you are going to help in this please try to follow the rules and conventions outlined below. By following these guidelines we can maximize our efficiency and maintain the quality of our wiki.
First of all: do it better, only then faster
Please always have in mind that the true quality of any documentation is determined by the USEABILITY and RELIABILITY of its content. Our primary concern is not how fast the content was written, or how much there is, regardless of how many users are waiting for it. Useless documentation will only cause people to get frustrated and leave the wiki, or even stop using Shareaza. The quality of the wiki is our strongest tool in Shareaza marketing. Please respect users and others working on wiki.
One thing belongs in one place only
Please take as a general rule "one thing is to be described in one single place (page)". If necessary it can be linked to with <code>[[linked to page name|alternative link text]]</code like in Wikipedia. This makes it easier for us to update content and also makes the Wiki easier to use.
Content about older systems
Please do not remove information about older versions of Shareaza or older operating systems that are not supported anymore, since the information might still be helpfull for some users. Rather than moving the outdated content to a new page, it is preferred to divide that part of the article into sections pertaining to each different version or operating system. These sections should be ordered by release date starting with the most recent and finishing with the oldest so that the most relevant information is at the top.
Content from last backup
If a page contains old content that could still be relevant to some users, please do not replace it with the new content, but instead merge the two whenever possible. If it is not possible to merge the two then the article may need to be divided into sections.
Reinstated structure
We try to reinstated structure, but please do not use subpages if this is not needed. This is very fancy but makes it much harder to read (for users), edit, recover, and verify information (have we recovered all and is it actual content). Translating of subpages is also more difficult when the context is lost, and in many cases subpages are untranslated orphans. Avoid it please, at least during recovery.
Comments on recovered pages
Recovered pages should begin with the Recovered template.
{{Recovered|page status message}}
If you can, please describe there the date the recovered content was last edited, and the date the content was recovered. Do not leave a date if you are unsure of it - It is better to have no date then to have a date that is wrong. This helps other people working on recovery.
If you think the whole page has been recovered please mention this, preferably with the date of the last edit on the old Wiki.
You may wish to write something like:
 Recovered |
The following content has been recovered from <recovery source>. Some content may be outdated, incomplete, inaccurate, or improperly formatted. | e |
If you want to leave a note for yourself or for others you can add comments using the note template. The Note template, unlike the Recovered template, can be color-coded to help with organization.
{{Note|#E8F7FC|note to self or others}}
You may wish to write something like:
end of recovered content
there was no backuped content
content recovered from last available backup
Once a page has been fully updated and verifyed to match the latest version of Shareaza, it should be marked with the {{Updated|date|Shareaza version|comment}} template and be added to the list on the WikiProjects.UpdateAndVerifyPages page.
Sources
Shareaza Wiki is recovered from many sources. We recover only our own, by Shareaza community created and owned, content. Unfortunately this also means that the content have to be selected and gathered manually to be useful (bot is useless when no rules can be set), and this make it will take a longer time to obtain effects, as in total there can be even about 5000-6000 unique pages to examine and process them to become Shareaza wiki pages again.
Formatting
Seems in many cases formatting will have to be done again. Plain text is pasted in most cases.
Date of recovered content
Date mentioned in source of recovered page is placed at the end of page or in template RecoveredPage. This is date of last edition in sabotaged wiki. This is not a date of last edit in current page which is added automaticly by current wiki at the footer of any page.
Language Template Usage
The Wiki hosted on SourceForge does not support all the same functions as the old Wiki. As a result of this, we have had to modify some of the templates to make them functional again. One example is the language template. If you would like to include the language template on a page you now have to add the page name of the english page on all languages versions other than English:
- Languages - This template adds a language bar to an article. The English page name is a required parameter and can only be omitted on the English page of the article.
Note that pages that are marked with the following template should not be translated into languages other than English:
|
Translation |
Do not translate this page into other languages. It is either low priority, too specific or incomplete. | e |
This is more precisely described in this thread URGENT HELP in RECOVER SHAREAZA RESOURCES NEEDED NOW!! Sources are copies pages grabbed from any available internet service cache like eg. Google, Yahoo etc. Grabbed of course by Shareaza volunteers. Many of these files are also available from http://sure-raza.com/backups/ .
How you can help (remember: this is open source project)
The biggest problem we are facing right now is that the people who have the files do not have the time or they are not making them properly available(dead links). For this reason was set up a site where everyone can upload and download these files as they please. Everyone who has anything please take the time to upload it at http://sure-raza.com/backups/ If you do not yet have access to the shareaza wiki and you want to help then please send a PM to Cyko_01 on the forum, who will gladly give anyone edit permissions (sourceforge forces us to give edit permissions individually, but it doesn't take long).
August 2010
A quick update on the recovery status: Most pages that could be recovered have been; Now more work is needed on updating them. Especially some of the language versions other than English do look terrible. Also, the Wiki templates have seen major updates that improve usability and add numerous small features to them.
- mfg, Old death 12:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
December 2009
- The English version of wiki has been reinstated by December 2009 in significant part, so it seems to be useful for general use. Especially new users can find in proper form basic help and explanations useful also for 2.5.0.0. Some pages (especially those advanced or located on deeper level) are recovered, however not formatted properly but readable, sorry - this usually means they were not verified yet. New content about 2.5.0.0 version is being added and updated, so wiki is alive and in fact becomes different then it was before.
- Non-English versions status depend on activity of particular language editor (also time he has devoted to edition and recovery of English version, which is priority number 1). Some looks very good, some doesn't look at all. Unfortunately, during efforts to reinstate non-English pages in very many number of cases content is empty (so lost) or contains only "TranslateMe" template. These efforts will be continued more intensively when English version reinstate will be finished and verified, so actual. Effects, if any possible, will be pasted in a form of row content as available (due to lack particular language skills) with "Recovery" template explaining situation.
August/September 2009
Current Shareaza Wiki content consist of last available for us backup and recovered pages which are being added one by one. This is backup from 2008 year so it is quite old, however can be useful. You can use it as trusted content, however have in mind it is outdated in many places. We are sorry for that, but the only way to change it is to recover lost Shareaza Wiki pages. Or get it back from person who had sabotaged it, William Shields Erwin, but that would require his good will and cooperation hence we think we can't count on this. Reasons and background are described here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareaza.