What happened to NPP's wiki page?
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I asked this question a long time ago but no one answered me.
The wiki page is supposed to be the official documentation of Notepad++, but now we can’t register and contribute to it. The most recent change was on 30 January 2015.
Did it close registration at some point? Or it was never open to the public? -
If I had to guess it had to do with the last many edits being along these lines:
(diff | hist) . . N Jeff Halevy Four Different Golfing Education Regimens To Increase Your Match; 00:31 . . (+3,843) . . VSJDonydynrtplzc (Talk | contribs) (Created page with “Weight Loss - How To Lose Weight Quickly<br><br><br><br>We all have different views on what we think healthful skin care is. Properly nowadays I am likely to briefly share wit…”)
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Alright, the advertisement. So they deleted the problematic accounts and closed public registration. But they still have moderator accounts right? What’s the reason that they don’t maintain the wiki page anymore? Can anybody (including the dev) modify the official wiki now?
For example, in my opinion, posts like this should just be integrated into the wiki page about regular expression. And by the way, that page contains several errors, which can be corrected at the same time.
According to my experience in this forum, a lot of people are asking easy regex questions. They are either too lazy to learn it themselves or just didn’t know where to find a decent regex tutorial/documentaion. I think they should first be directed to the wiki page about regex. And the errors should be corrected beforehead.
To these easy questions, I think we should not answer the question completely. We just need to direct the OP to the proper documentation. This not only saves our effort, but also teaches the OP the right way to get things done.
I respect @guy038 's mastering skill of writing regex and his patience to almost everyone asking regex questions. But I sincerely think he should put his effort more into conttribution to the wiki page if possible.
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Very good points about the Wiki page, for sure, but if people cannot contribute to it…well, it becomes out of date and somewhat irrelevant…as it has.
a lot of people are asking easy regex questions
Yes, this is true. And this isn’t a regex site, so I often wonder about everyone’s tolerance for such questions…
For myself, I make the assumption that the posters have had not had prior experience with regex and are simply using Notepad++ to text edit when they run up against a tough problem: a need to manipulate text that only can be done by regex (or, of course, programming).
For these people, I like to give them a response that (a) gives them a first exposure to regex and (b) provide a regex search/replacement that (hopefully) solves their problem. If they never have a need for regex again, they can ignore (a) and simply use (b)–but hopefully if another tough problem comes their way they will remember (a). I should also (c) point them to the N++ regex references (including the FAQ Desk one, but I’m not diligent about this. :-(
HOWEVER , before providing (b), I check their previous posts (by clicking on their avatar)…if they are a “repeat easy regex offender” then I suggest that they “should be good enough with regex after repeated exposure” to solve their own problem or at least know where to go to get dedicated and specific regex help. Perhaps mentioning (c) at this point also comes into it. I then do NOT provide (b). I may, however, state “Tell us what you’ve tried and what happened…” if a problem which seems easy may lead to something deeper…
I’ve noticed that @PeterJones seems to follow this track as well when responding to regex-related questions. +1
@guy038 is a special case. He loves regex and helping people so much that the above strategy doesn’t occur to him. +5 (at least, for the desire to be helpful).
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Thanks for the reply. I’ve once been to Sublime’s forum, and I also find regex-related questions. So I think it is common to have regex questions for text editor forums. But here, NPP forum, is a perfect place for regex questions, especially the complicated ones, because of guy038.
As for my case, my first post was about Regex syntax of “Replace with”, because I didn’t find it in the wiki page about regular expression. It was guy038 who showed me the right direction right away. After that, I learnt regex myself and I didn’t find it very difficult to cover 80% of all the syntax. If the wiki page had covered the essential information about Regex syntax of “Replace with”, I wouldn’t have posted that question. So I think essential wiki page information is very important.
Some last words about learning regex. I didn’t used any of the regex sites. I just practiced on NPP, following the official regex documentation on BOOST. And it’s very good to know that there is a NPP version with less bug in regex, which is mentioned in the FAQ Desk.
Actually, talking about regex questions is a little off-topic. I’m still curious about the technical status of the wiki page. I mean, can you devs log-in the wiki right now? Is the wiki page editable? Can you give or borrow me an account? Or maybe give an account to guy038 to let him organize the regex page. I also noticed that the Plugin Central is a little outdated. It’s unclear where to find the newest plugins.
Things are getting a little messy, because being outdated. Where is the most recent official documentation of NPP? Is it gonna be in the FAQ catagory of this forum?
