Design and Documentation

INTRODUCTION

The design of this wiki has been very much a learn as you go exercise. I came in to it knowing nothing about wikis, and after a bit of experimenting with PMwiki, was convinced to stick with Mediawiki as the platform to build on. I have not regretted making the change, and have also not yet found anything that I cannot implement in a practical way. While the construction of the wiki is on-going, a good number of the main building blocks are now firmly established allowing rapid implementation of new sections as I find time to tackle them.

There are of course some areas that I can envisage the use of certain functionality that is not included yet, and Maps coupled with Geo-referencing comes to mind, but these are big complex topics that I cannot get my head into at this stage yet.

This Design and Documentation page will attempt to record the design philosophy behind each section. As many parts use the Cargo database extension to Mediawiki as a way of accessing organised data, understanding how this is all configured will be important to anyone wanting or needing to learn how to maintain or extend this wiki.

SCOPE

The concept of this wiki was developed from a need to be able to store information about any New Zealand rail related topic. This goes well beyond what the layman might think of 'rail related', and include the New Zealand Government Railways, which will always be the largest area of data and interest, but also and private Railways, all Municipal Tramways, all/any Industrial tramways wich includes logging and mining trams as well as construction and industrial transportation aids.

Organising all that data becomes a bit of a nightmare, but if you pick away at it bit by bit, you do see it getting organised as you go. A wiki by nature is 'page' based, meaning that everything is based around presenting information on a 'page'. Pages have no real size limits, but do have practical limits, requiring you to think about the end-user's experience when they access a particular page of the wiki. While I know that it can and does get accessed from small-screen devices, small screens have not been a focus of design. The long-term goal is that this becomes a tool for serious and hobby researchers, who would normally work on a desk-top machine.