Guide: How to correctly check for available Notepad++ updates using your web browser:

PeterJones

With @Meta-Chuh’s recent “guide” posts, you might want to ask Don if he could be made a FAQ contributor. (And then move his two “guide” posts into the FAQ area, like you did with my FAQs before there was the FAQ Desk)

PeterJones

@PeterJones said:

@guy038 , … you might want to ask Don if he could be made a FAQ contributor.

Actually, I just emailed you and @donho about it. I guess I shouldn’t need you to play middle-man in this request. :-)

Meta Chuh

@guy038 , @PeterJones and all.

thanks, but i’m not sure if the faq area would be appropriate, as the pythonscript guide is not directly related to the notepad++ project, or the notepad++ community forum, and the updater url does not have any relevance for the majority of users.

my fear is, that if we would put too much information into the faqs, the main visitors would stop reading.
and guides like these, while being interesting, are below any major relevance, and far below an escalating topic.

we could always pin one of these guides, but not yet, as we did not need to reference to one of them yet.

would you agree ?

PeterJones

I personally think that at least the “how to install PythonScript” is asked frequently enough that it counts as a FAQ. And I still think you should be made a FAQ contributor. But I won’t fight too hard to get the Guides moved in the FAQ category. Like @Scott-Sumner’s post in the “how to markdown code on this forum” topic, we can still easily link to your Guides, even if they aren’t in the FAQ category.

Meta Chuh

@PeterJones

thank you for your trust and support.
i respect and can understand all reasons for your actions.

i have my personal reasons why i currently don’t want to be elevated as a faq contributor, which you will for sure understand, as we both had the privilege to know each other a bit better during the past two+ years.

as soon as i would be a faq contributor, i would currently feel obliged to contribute, instead of submitting a guide, or nothing at all, whenever i like to do so, thus making notepad++ more of a solely “working job” than a recreational place for me.
as soon as i consider somtething a “working job”, i can be a real pain in the a… to developers and to myself, and i don’t want that to happen at any freelance community project. (i’m sure @donho can agree to that 😉 )
as soon as i consider something a “working job”, which consumes far too much of my time, without producing sufficient mutual benefits, i would quit this job.
as we are, and will continue to be, a very harmonic community and team, we can act like this, by sharing and dividing different duties.
for example if @guy038 considers a guide to be worthy to be included in the faqs, he can and will do so, by moving it to the faq section, without any need that the author has the privilege to post it at the faqs directly.
and if i, you, or any other member of our community, believes that any guide, which is not authored by you or any faq maintainer, should be moved to the faq section, even it it seem less relevant to the majority of users at first glance, we can always ask @guy038 about his opinion and ask if he would agree to move it to the faqs.

ps: sorry for writing that much, but i would not be able to sleep well, before transporting what’s going on inside my head.

with my sincere thanks and grateful regards,
MetaChuh

guy038

Hello, @don-ho, @meta-chuh, @peterjones, @ekopalypse,

Sorry, to be absent, these last days, but I had a very cloudy ski-day, yesterday and today, we went to the restaurant to celebrate our daughter’s birthday, who turned 30 on March 6 ! Of course, she doesn’t totally appreciate the fact that she reached this milestone ;-))

Now, regarding our forum, I do understand your two points of view !

@meta-chuh :

I highly support the peterjones’s idea of giving you the opportunity to contribute to the FAQ area ;–)). Don’t be afraid, @don-ho will probably grant you permissions to act inside the FAQ section, but don’t feel obliged to “feed” that section, at once and/or at any moment ! To my mind it’s just an additional facility to improve knowledge of N++ users ;-)) Now, if you prefer not to get these additional rights, naturally, I’ll respect your decision !

@peterjones :

I can also understand @meta-chuh’s reluctance to multiply the topics in the FAQ section, especially, when it’s seemed not totally N++ related ! Now, I have thought of a solution/compromise that could reconcile your two points of view :

We would add a new FAQ topic, named, for instance, “General guidance for …” which would just contain a list of N++ Community links : Of course, @meta-chuh guides or any post with significant explanations on the most frequent questions , with a title, as a short explanation of each topic ( I also think about the Markdown guide of @scott-sumner ! )

Of course, as English is not my mother tongue, just think about a suitable title of this new FAQ, that, furthermore, should encourage everyone to read more ;-))

Just a suggestion ! What is your feeling about this idea?

Best Regards,

guy038

Meta Chuh

@guy038

Of course, she doesn’t totally appreciate the fact that she reached this milestone ;-))

i guess this will pass, as soon as she gets over her own honesty hurdle, and starts not telling her real age when she’s asked … as you know, she will then most likely forget her real age, or forget to care about it … until her 40th is closer ;-)

We would add a new FAQ topic, named, for instance, “General guidance for …” which would just contain a list of N++ Community links : Of course, @meta-chuh guides or any post with significant explanations on the most frequent questions , with a title, as a short explanation of each topic ( I also think about the Markdown guide of @scott-sumner ! )

yes, your concept of creating a new category, e.g. General Guides, which would optically match the category General Discussion, seems to be the best to me at the moment. 👍

this category, to keep it structured, could or should be a moderated only category, where you can move the guides, for which you decide that they are of major relevance, and e.g. only trusted faq members can post guides directly without further moderation.

we could brainstorm about a unified naming prefix for all guides, like Guide:, matching the FAQ Desk: prefix scheme.
(in case this category might get filled extensively in the future, we could later rename some of the prefixes to something like Plugin Guide: and Notepad++ Guide:, if you decide that you want to separate them visually for easier reading.)

let’s sleep (and/or talk) a few fortnights over this, to let everything settle down a bit, and to plan everything as perfect and comprehensible as we can, before making any decisions.

ps: if this new category for guides will be eventually launched, i guess we could prepare more guides in advance, in order to present it better as the community driven extension of the notepad++ wiki.

pps @PeterJones : retrospectively seen, looking at the brainstorming and possible new community enhancements we have now, due to this trigger, i completely appreciate now, that you started all this, albeit having put me under a bit of pressure at first glance.

guy038

Hello, @meta-chuh,

Ah, personally, I was not really thinking about adding a new section, to the 8 existing sections of our Community ( which fill up the screen, anyway ! ) but, rather, about a new post, in the FAQ section, which would only contain links, of our forum, to pertinents posts which will gather important notions of main subjects, related to Notepad++ or its plugins.

In other words, a list of links with a short description of each of them, which would redirect to summary posts on a specific topic, created by anyone of us.

Let’s wait a little while, until a correct idea, concerning these future guides, emerges !

Best Regards,

guy038

pnedev

Hello guys,

I would suggest the following:

Rename FAQ section to FAQ and Guides .
In FAQ section revise the current topics to remove all that are no longer related (or are obsolete) and make them as concise and ‘to-the-point’ as possible WITHOUT ANY LINKS to other posts. This section needs to be the “golden source of information” on a given topic and all the relevant issues should link to the topic here and not the other way around. The topics may link each other however. Also remove the unnecessary FAQ Desk: from the name of each topic.
Don’t hurry with creating a new topic here. Only when enough duplicating (or similar) help requests have been made to justify it (that would mean the subject is commonly misunderstood and difficult for the user).

For example some “good” (IMO) topics would be
How to check if my Notepad++ is 32-bit or 64-bit,
Plugin not compatible with current Notepad++ version,
Portable vs. installed Notepad++
etc…

As to the new ‘theme-of-the-day’ (recent missing plugins and failed plugins installation problems) we might create topic named Troubleshooting plugin installation problems and list there possible causes of plugin problems and how to overcome them.

One thing that is still unclear to me is “Shall all Notepad++ versions be supported?”. I mean from the FAQ point of view.
Perhaps the guides in FAQ section should address and be made only for the most recent Notepad++ versions and for the global topics of course. If we try to make version-specific guides cover ALL Notepad++ versions it will only make them unclean. So each guide should state the Notepad++ version it is relevant to or state that it is globally applicable.

BR

PeterJones

I think widening the purview of the FAQ section to FAQ and GUIDES is a good idea.

I also think that @guy038 should lobby with @donho for the other FAQ contributors to be given FAQ-editing rights after the 3-minute timeout – right now, only @guy038 can go back and edit a FAQ after the timeout, and that’s a rather unfair burden to place on him. (I tried including that request in my email to @donho last week, but his mail server thinks that my email server sends too much spam, and won’t let my mails through :-(. That’s a problem with hosting my mail on a major web co-location/webhost provider.)

guy038

Hi, @pnedev, @meta-chuh, @peterjones, @alan-kilborn, @ekopalypse, @dinkumoil, @terry-r,

@pnedev, I totally agree to your To-Do list ! This scheme seems quite coherent, indeed ! Of course, I do note that, what is exposed in point 2., is just the opposite to what I was thinking about ! But, upon reflection, your way is the right one : when people enters the future FAQ and Guides section, one would enter a reserved area of reference topics about the most important N++ subjects, with possible links to other FAQ and Guides topics, only !

However, @pnedev, what’s about the Where to find REGEX documentation topic ? It contains lot of links, all external to our forum… which are… just why that topic was created !!

As @peterjones mentioned it, in order to correctly do this documentation work, each of you need to be able :

To re-open and modify any post, at any time
To access the future FAQ and Guides section, and manage any post, inside

So, I’ll going to e-mail @don-ho and propose him to give you identical rights, on our forum !

As you said, we could suppress the FAQ Desk: header. I also think that point 3. is pertinent. In France, we use the expression “To hurry slowly” to express your idea ;-)) On the other hand, I agree with your different topic titles

Finally, regarding the opportunity to build this documentation for all N++ versions, I think, like you, that it should aim recent N++ versions, only ! BTW, mentioning to which N++ versions, any guide refers, is a sensible idea !

So, let’s wait till the @don-ho reply. Then, guys, we’ll have a lot of work ahead of us ;-))

Best Regards,

guy038

P.S. :

BTW, I personally think that the @meta-chuch polite formulation ( Welcome to the Notepad++ Community ) should start or be added to all topics of the future FAQ and Guides section. Why didn’t I think of this welcome formula myself ?!

pnedev

Hi @guy038 ,

Thanks for your prompt reply. Punctual as always!

However, @pnedev, what’s about the Where to find REGEX documentation topic ?

There will be exceptions of course and this topic is a good example of such. REGEX type of user questions are indeed quite common (and you’ve been addressing those brilliantly as far as I can remember) and this FAQ topic is exactly what’s needed for that particular area of interest.
What I meant was to limit the links where possible and especially to avoid ANY links to other sections in Notepad++ Community forum.
But you already got that correctly.

BR

Meta Chuh

hi to all and thanks for driving this discussion.
i have the feeling that the result can be very, very productive.

@pnedev:

Rename FAQ section to FAQ and Guides.

i believe that separated categories for faqs and guides, will be easier to read (if we will be permitted to do so):

FAQ - a very clean and short faq area, basic information only.
Guides - with one guide per topic.
every guide shall be written on a single topic page, with as few as possible links (links only to be used as complementary information).
guides that are of repeated value will be pinned.

an extra category for guides seems like a more structured choice, if we are permitted.

remove the unnecessary FAQ Desk: from the name of each topic.

yes and no.
yes because: prefixes like FAQ Desk: are a double titling, as the visitor is already in the faq section, but only if he specifically entered our community page.

on the other hand, prefixes like that are useful tags for external search engines.
for guides it’s even more recommend to keep a prefix like Guide: or similar, as there will be more of them than faqs, and it will be much easier to attract external people googling for a guide or solution.

(as we know, most “non community” users search at google, some of them fail with the results they find, they then discover the notepad++ community page, and their first post looks something like: “this is sh…, i’ve tried everything and nothing works” 😉)

Don’t hurry with creating a new topic here. Only when enough duplicating (or similar) help requests have been made to justify it (that would mean the subject is commonly misunderstood and difficult for the user).

yes, we can always create a guide at general discussion, and if it turns out to be of value we can move it, or ask to get it moved, to the Guides category later.

So each guide should state the Notepad++ version it is relevant to or state that it is globally applicable.

yes, this is a must have. even if it is intended to be globally applicable, it will probably not always be future proof, and i would suggest that every guide contains a note, with the notepad++ version, that was used to build this guide.

@guy038:

In France, we use the expression “To hurry slowly” to express your idea ;-))

yes, this translates to something like:
to build a castle you have to set one brick after the other.

and i also prefer to set a small brick every month, than to wake up and realise, that we have successfully built an entire wall in the middle of a highway. 😉

BTW, I personally think that the @meta-chuch polite formulation ( Welcome to the Notepad++ Community ) should start or be added to all topics of the future FAQ and Guides section. Why didn’t I think of this welcome formula myself ?!

yes it’s a nice, round circle that comes together at the beginning and the present.
@donho created it, @glennfromiowa reintroduced it, me and @PeterJones picked it up, and now we will maintain it. 👍
this welcome is also proven to be helpful on occasions, when a first time visitor is under higher tension.

i like to see our ideas evolve, and grow together, like the roots of the forest of pandora (avatar 2009).

…and once we are euphorically satisfied with the (maybe small, maybe big) concept, we will step on the porches to heaven and ask for permission to do so … 😁

with very best regards to all
metachuh

pnedev

@Meta-Chuh said:

i believe that separated categories for faqs and guides, will be easier to read …

Well, that’s OK too although the reference topics will be then split in two places. I can’t say which is better.

… on the other hand, prefixes like that are useful tags for external search engines …

That’s a very good point indeed. And a good reason to leave the topic “header”. But let’s at least reduce it to FAQ .

Thanks and BR

PeterJones

@pnedev said:

Well, that’s OK too although the reference topics will be then split in two places. I can’t say which is better.

I’d personally prefer all in one place

… on the other hand, prefixes like that are useful tags for external search engines …
That’s a very good point indeed. And a good reason to leave the topic “header”. But let’s at least reduce it to FAQ .

Yeah, I would vote for “FAQ” rather than “FAQ Desk” too. And I’m the one who started the “FAQ Desk” nomenclature. I originally thought it was a good idea, especially when there was no FAQ category, to indicate that this was the answer to the FAQ (“you’ve been sent to the FAQ Desk to find the answer to your question…”). But in the intervening time, I’ve liked that nomenclature less.

PeterJones

@PeterJones said in Guide: How to correctly check for available Notepad++ updates using your web browser::

Yeah, I would vote for “FAQ” rather than “FAQ Desk” too. And I’m the one who started the “FAQ Desk” nomenclature. I originally thought it was a good idea, especially when there was no FAQ category, to indicate that this was the answer to the FAQ (“you’ve been sent to the FAQ Desk to find the answer to your question…”). But in the intervening time, I’ve liked that nomenclature less.

And yet, 4.5 years later, I still hadn’t changed those prefixes. But I finally found the elusive Round Tuit™ today, so all the FAQ entries are now listed as “FAQ: …” rather than “FAQ Desk: …”

And while I haven’t renamed the section, I am perfectly happy to put Guide-like entries into the FAQ (and looking back over the entries, many of the historical FAQ entries really are more of a guide than an answer to a single Frequently Asked Question).

dumble dor

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