#WIKI# Table of Contents & Wiki-Editor-Group Guide and Proposal

Here you can get the ideas of many people who share the same interests with you. Their different opinions on the problems may help you to have more rich thinking

You can share your ideas

The person who writes wiki is a kind of dedication, seeing that everyone is free and quick to find the data and information they want, and describing the truth in a fair manner as much as possible to help everyone better solve the problem. And I participated in the process myself. This is the satisfaction of Wiki

Reduce learning costs from the perspective of users

Compared with the official written instruction documents, the wiki that users participate in editing can be viewed more from the perspective of users, so that it can be better read and understood by users

Improve efficiency and support

More people participate in Wiki writing, which can improve the frequency, breadth and depth of its updates, and serve users more efficiently

How to join a wiki group?

Click the menu in the title bar on any page of the Forum

Then click Groups

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Select the group to join and send the request

You could click here to apply for joining wiki group

How to start wiki writing？

By default, new users at Trust Level 0 can not edit wiki posts. They will see only a green pencil icon at the top right of the wiki posts.

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When users are able to edit the wiki posts, in addition to the pencil, they will notice that the Reply button has been de-emphasised in favor of the Edit button

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Clicking on the pencil produces no effect unless the post has been modified.In this case, the number of changes made since the creation of the wiki will also appear

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clicking that icon, a user not enabled to create wiki posts will be able to see the revisions that have been made to the post:

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a user enabled to create wiki posts will also see the Edit Wiki buttons:

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What should be edited

If you see that existing instructions have misused words or grammatical problems in expression, you can correct them
If you find that the existing instructions are not accurate enough or can be described better, you can improve them
If you find something missing from the existing instructions, you can supplement them

References reading

mobo · January 12, 2020, 2:09am

A Wiki is a good idea. To attract contributors, though, it would help if we could see the existing content without joining. From your post, it’s not clear to me how to do that.

Next, I would suggest creating a number of empty topics for (1) the concepts used by MN (e.g., notecards, mind-maps, etc.), (2) topics covering the basic tasks of note-taking, inter-operating with other applications (e.g., “Sharing Notes with TinderBox”), etc., and perhaps (3) some common workflows for academic research. Contributors can then add/edit the content of these topics. You could start the content of many of the topics by copying/pasting the existing MN documentation.

The topic titles should be chosen carefully, and should make sense in standard English. I.e., concept topic titles are typically nouns, while task topic titles are usually gerund phrases (e.g., “Exporting Notes”).

If you want to post an outline here first, I can quickly review it for you. (FWIW, I have several decades of experience as a technical writer in the software business.)

Heng_Support-Team · January 23, 2020, 8:58am

First of all, I’m sorry that I didn’t reply you in time!
As you said, users do not need to join the group to view relevant content, but only group members can edit wikis. The specific editing methods are described above.
At present, we have produced a batch of content. You can click here to view it. The new content will be planned to be produced later.
At last, I sincerely apologize to you again. Our negligence has brought you a bad experience.

mobo · February 14, 2020, 4:56am

Some general observations on the Wiki: this is a good start, but there are a number of things that need to be cleaned up. Mostly, the instructions I have read are unclear. There are many problems with non-standard and confusing usage of English.

(1) I started trying to edit the Wiki and immediately found there is some limit imposed on topic titles. Evidently, these titles must be at least 15 characters. Sorry, but this is stupid. A topic title like “Overview” is perfectly acceptable in software documentation. Your readers’ time is expensive – don’t ask them to read more text than necessary. If you want any serious community input, I strongly suggest you fix this immediately.

(2) Next, as I mentioned before on this thread, a task is an activity so task titles should be gerunds, i.e., you should have a topic entitled “Importing”, not “Import”.

(3) Next, I see many pages on the Wiki with titles including the word “issues”. In common English, “issues” now means “problems”, so all of these titles literally mean that MarginNote has many known problems. You should rename all of these pages to something more precise.

(3) Next, many page titles are questions. Questions are the language of a FAQ, not software documentation. All of these should be renamed to statements, not questions. I.e., " Q2 How can MarginNote3 import different types of documents?" should be renamed to “Importing Different Types of Documents”. So, get rid of all the question numbers (e.g., “Q2”) and make them statements.

(4) Next, on that page, Q2 How can MarginNote3 import different types of documents?, menu picks and UI elements should generally be emphasized in bold (e.g., the Share menu). This is for clarity and ease of understanding.

(5) Next, I find many arrow characters (→) used through the Wiki pages to indicate steps. This is confusing and not standard for technical documentation. The arrow character is normally used only for sub-menu items (e.g., Import → Add Documents from Files). If you want to indicate steps, use words like “Next”, “Then”, etc., or use numbers.

(6) Also, I would not put the version number of the application in the topic titles on the Wiki (e.g., “MarginNote3”). This is simply bad planning. What happens when MarginNote 4 is releated? Are you going to edit every single one of these Wiki pages?

(7) Next, for clarity, you should use the infinitive form of verbs that are directions to users. I.e., instead of “Add a document…”, you should write “To add a document…”.

(8) Next, including phrases like “follow the instructions” in front of an animated GIF is not adequate. You should explain the steps clearly in English. An animated GIF is not a set of instructions.

Ultimately, it is your responsibility as the software provider to explain the app’s operation clearly. Users/contributors cannot be expected to guess how all of these features work, and then document this in the Wiki.

Lanco_Support-Team · February 15, 2020, 7:32am

Thanks very much for your patience and preciseness.
I‘m handling this list with my colleagues. Later give you a response.

Regards,
Lanco

Sushi_Support-Team · February 21, 2020, 3:13pm

Hello mobo,

This is Kevin from MarginNote support team. As per your suggestions, most of them have now been fixed:

(1) The character limit in titles is removed.

(2) (3) Titles are now fixed.

(4) They are indeed in bold in the Chinese documents, but are unfourtunately left out in translation and are being fixed.

(5) (7) We have begun to fix them.

(8) On most pages, I believe we do have the steps listed out before the animation (though sometimes not so clearly). Still, we will check again to make sure.

About (6) and your final concern:

You are right it’s our responsibility to provide a comprehensive manual to the users. But now, we are in a shortage of translators and support staff. Thus, we would like to provide an unofficial user guide, and that is what we intent the wiki to be. It is now being translated, by our staff in their off time, from the Chinese FAQ. We hope it could be at least somewhat helpful.

The official user manual is under compilation, and we expect completion in 6 month. It will include detailed instructions and video tutorials. The Chinese version will be written by us, and other languages will be professionally translated.

We welcome the power users to participate in the wiki, and give us corrections and suggestions. We will learn from you, to make a better manual, and a better MarginNote.

Again, thank you very much for your time.

Regards,
Kevin

jprint · May 28, 2024, 7:06pm

Does MarginNote4 no longer export to DEVONthink?

If it does, please explain how users can do so.

Thank you.

#WIKI# Table of Contents & Wiki-Editor-Group Guide and Proposal

Community-powered Wiki

Read me

Importing

Exporting

File management & Reading options

Study Module

Review Module

Excerpting & Annotating

Video Annotating

Mindmap

Outliner

Flashcard

Research

OCR

Sync

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