[Survey] Wiki Coda Community Project

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Wiki Coda Community Project

Hello everyone,

I would like to propose to the community a project which would aim to help as many people as possible to learn Coda more easily, whatever their level.

It is not about replacing the official documentation of Coda, but just to bring more precision.

Moreover, you all know that we come from different backgrounds and that for some people, like me, language is sometimes a barrier to understanding even when using translation tools.

Some will say that it is easy to learn English etc., but that is not the point.
Moreover, not everyone is gifted to learn languages ^^ or lacks time.

That’s why I’d like to propose to the community the creation of a Wikipedia Coda multilingual.

This Wikipedia will have to be educational, maintained by the community with the support of people with a sufficient level and ready to invest a minimum in this project.

Who can participate?

Anyone can participate. However, to avoid bad information being shared, it would be wise to have the information shared checked for accuracy in case of doubt.

The support of Coda and their professional staff would be great, but it would require additional resources that they may not have at their disposal.

What topics will be covered in this wiki?

Well, mostly everything, but mostly formulas and data processing, relationships between tables. And why not specific problem solving :), without forgetting good practices.

Why do you want to start such a project ?

It’s simple, I like to help, and this, since always, you probably noticed it, but I do my best since my arrival to help as much as possible to find solutions to the various problems which meet people. I am currently attending the Coda Bootcamp given by @Maria.

What would you need to do this project?

I’m going to make a sample structure to present you the idea which will be improved of course by people more experienced than me :).

I have a team plan so far, but a space directly at Coda to host the project would be a guarantee that it remains available to all.

But most of all, I need volunteers in several languages with a good level to add the necessary information in their language.

Also, motivated people to provide detailed explanations, but as simply as possible keeping the pedagogical aspect.

  • Are you for or against?
  • Are you ready to invest in improving Coda?
  • Do you think it is useful or not?

0 voters

1 Like
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Hello @Agile_Dynamics and @anon51043999

Thanks already to those who answered :), but do not hesitate to leave a comment and your views will be a great help ^^

Sorry in the poll, I forgot to ask questions for and against separately :(, so those who are against added it in comment, first poll and it had to be a mistake :frowning:

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i assumed that voting for the first was voting FOR and not against. didnt make sense otherwise :o)

1 Like
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Hello Max,

Indeed, I wanted to modify afterwards but the changes cannot be done beyond 5 minutes :frowning:

And I’m glad to see that pros like you are interested in such a project ^^, thanks for taking the time to read my post :slight_smile:

Sincerely,

Thierry

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Come on codans :), you can do it and vote to have better sources to help the community ^^

@maria What do you think, I’m currently following the bootcamp and it could be an interesting capstone :slight_smile:

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Hi @Thierryvm,

I would love to see more practical examples on Formula. I love the video content here https://coda.io/learn and to be honest some of the issues I have seen on “Ask the Community” could have been solved if watched in full. My issue is that the Formula reference resource is light on explanations or is confusing. For example the Sort formula seems simple enough but took me way longer than it should have to get it working with just the information provided here: https://coda.io/formulas#Sort.

Read only interactive examples of how a formula can be implemented would be much better for learning. I don’t know about others but some of how I have learned how to do something is just by seeing it done somewhere else in a one of the Gallery docs and digging into the buttons etc.

Are you going to have somewhere for best practices? I’ve made mistakes where I would think of a solution and find that there is a simpler way or more efficient way at least. E.g. Initially I would create templates rows and mark them as templates and filter them out from views. A better way is to have a duplicate table with the exact same structure and reference that. Also I used .Last() to get a row reference created rather than just embedding the AddRow into a SetControlValue or ModifyRow lookup to get the row ref automatically.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes and happy to help add to it where possible.

Dale

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Dear @Scott_Collier-Weir,

Although I am not responsible for the management of this community, personally I don’t think that at this location it’s not proper to advertise your work and you should put this under the “Marketplace”.

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Thanks for the input! Probably best to DM in the future too. Thanks!

1 Like
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Yes, you are right Scott. Sorry, It was not my intention to request this in public

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Hello @Dale_Cowling, @Scott_Collier-Weir and @Jean_Pierre_Traets
Community Champion

Thanks already for your participation and the vote ^^. To answer your questions, this community wiki is intended to be interactive and educational.

So, indeed there are shortcomings in this respect and I had planned to add a best practice section and a video section to support the formulas.
I agree that it is easier to follow video tutorials but not only because for me to have one or more concrete examples already done to be able to analyze the tables etc…

Regarding the work done by @Scott_Collier-Weir, whether it is his YouTube videos or the power pack formulas, I think it is possible to add a section as well but I privilege more the mutual aid side. I understand that all work deserves to be paid and that is quite normal.

Moreover, I added that it was a community wiki so the help of this one to improve it is in this purpose that I saw the interest of such a project.

The structure that I realized is only a base to begin and go in a direction and I waited precisely that people like you (pro coda) gives me their opinion and vote, by knowing that all the information shared in this project will be accessible in complement of the basic information provided by Coda because for me this one misses information especially for the people who know nothing of this universe and even me with my knowledge in programming it was not simple to understand the logic. Even today, despite the Bootcamp, I need help because I don’t speak English for more than 26 years :frowning: , it’s not easy to follow even with videos.

Fortunately, I can count on @christiaan-huizer and his great patience :slight_smile: to guide me and I do the same by helping as much as possible on this community forum, hence this great project.

I hope I’ve been precise enough and I also hope I can count on you all to make this community wiki in a good mood.

I would give the access for the edition and I think that the addition of a part reserved for the moderators for example would also be a plus but there on the other hand my knowledge is insufficient to carry out it.

Sincerely,

Thierry

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Hi, would be great to see a short YT video about the purpose, the usage, how this package works and what it includes! (is it… a template, a doc, an interactive tutorial ?)
Great idea, though (on my way to learn Coda;)

1 Like
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I love this idea, and think it makes a great capstone too!

3 Likes
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Hello @maria,

I thank you for your support :slight_smile: and see you tonight (well for me it will be 11pm) for the bonus office hours

Sincerely,

Thierry

P.s: A little vote for the road :slight_smile: it will surely motivate people ^^

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This is amazing @Thierryvm ! Thanks for organizing this.

Count me in for content in Spanish! (I’m a native speaker)

1 Like
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Hello @Hector_Reyes1 ,

Oh I’m glad, I didn’t expect this much and I can’t wait to launch the project and hope to have as many people as possible.

Sincerely,

Thierry

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I’m adding a conference system for up to 25 people, for those who don’t know Gather Town (Gather) it’s a zoom in and out that allows you to create a virtual coworking environment.

The advantage is that you can share your screen in good quality sound and video, you can also create the environment according to your preferences and have separate classes and password protected.

If you want a discord server, I have created Coda French but everyone is welcome. However, as I don’t speak English well, you’ll have to be understanding hehe :slight_smile: because I use a translator ^^

I’m waiting for many of you.

Sincerely,

Thierry

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Hello to all of you who answered for this project, I announce you that the access in edition mode is activated so that you can use/improve it and make it a great community wiki ^^.

Let the adventure begin and have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Thierry

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Hello @Hector_Reyes1

I have opened the multilingual community wiki and you can add in your native language the content you want. I will create the pages for the formulas that will have to be added by respecting the English model for the table ^^.

Thanks again for your participation and I’m looking forward to see what it will be like.

Sincerely,

Thierry

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Hi,

This message is for @Thierryvm but also everyone here who can offer an opinion.

I have being looking at the doc to see where best I can contribute and I’ve have some questions that I think need to be discussed. Hopefully I am not overthinking things as I am prone to do :stuck_out_tongue:

How best to stop unwanted edits?
We want new users to be able to use this as a resource for getting started. How best to do this or that with practical examples etc. How do we stop them from making edits? A new user can unfortunately make unwanted edits that we may not see and when the next new user comes along the guidance may no longer work/be relevant. One possibility is restricting editors and making the document view only for everyone else. This would require @Thierryvm to lock down the doc and only approve editors based on merit. Perhaps have an application form for someone to request edit rights and they have to meet specific criteria. Alternatively lock all pages except one where edits can be recommended and then it would be up to @Thierryvm or chosen editors to implement. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully on board with crown sources knowledge base, but unlike Wiki edits can happen by accident rather than with intent (enable edits, make change, lockdown). Hopefully there is a feature we can utilise?

If we cannot find a way to lock down the wiki, how do we manage demo content?
If I want to create practical examples for a formula, how would we serve this up to the viewer. They would want click through buttons and modify things to see how they tick but we don’t want it breaking. My initial thought is a separate View only doc per need or one single massive demo doc with a page per need and links to the required page. Who would host this though and again who would have access to add the content.

Who can make design choices?
For example, @Thierryvm has kindly added the best practices section I recommended. I would like to add guidance on use of Template Rows, pushing users to Lookups instead of other ways such as .Find to link rows, and warning of the dangers of .Last() in a multi user environment. A table would be best I think but also a simple Do’s and Don’t list has it’s merits. Also on the Formulas table the explanation is a Text column. I think this should be Canvas for much richer content. I don’t want to unilaterally make that change. Do we add a new section to propose changes to allow for voting?

What if we see something wrong, disagree with content or there is actively malicious content?
If someone posts an example but it is not in line with best practices or I know of a more efficient methodology, what do I do? Also, if someone random gets access and posts explicit content. How would we know unless someone sees it, who would it be reported to, would anyone act as a moderator? I would not want @Thierryvm to suffer any negativity from Coda for any violation of guidelines etc.

Do we need to a to do list?
There is so much that this doc can offer. It’s hard to know where to begin. We would also not want to two people to be working on the same content. For example I might start working on a practical example of AddRow but not be doing it directly in the doc as it could take a few days to finalise due to other commitments and I don’t want it to sit there unfinished. By the time I post it someone has already posted something. What course of action do I take? Has my time been wasted. I can appreciate that I could just do it all on doc, this is just an example of what might happen.

Apologies for the long read.

All the best

Dale

2 Likes
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Hi @Dale_Cowling,

First of all, thank you very much for taking so much time to put forward the challenges ^^.

How to best stop unwanted changes?

I’ve been thinking about some solutions to prevent overflow like a Moderator table that I could give editing rights to.

Then, yes, a form would be an excellent idea and based on some criteria, we could define who could join a second group, confirmed user.

But who will be able to judge and I’m afraid that it would be a problem and it would require a Vote system to give people enough chance to become either a moderator or a power user.

One can even say that a confirmed user can become a Moderator after a certain period of time.

Currently, I have a team plan, but in the long run, I hope that CODA will be able to retrieve the document to host it. This would also avoid any worries if I had to change my price plan.

The advantage of having a team plan is precisely for a question of security related to this community project. This allows me to limit the interactions that you find in the locking part and it is possible to choose page by page.

If we can’t find a way to lock the wiki, how do we manage the content of the demo?

I totally agree with you :), we don’t want it to become a big broken/ugly document, etc.

How to solve this problem?

I think that it will be necessary to carry out in the canvas, of the examples which one will be able to reinitialize with buttons for example or formulas which reset the contents with its origin.

However, at my current level of knowledge, I am far from being able to implement this :(, and that’s where people like you and others come in ^^.

It would also be necessary to be able to archive the content to avoid having tables that are too big and not very practical to use.

Obviously, we are at the very beginning and it’s now that we have to improve the global structure and make tests, I opened the wiki to allow competent people to make their tests and give their points of view to improve the best :).

Who can make design choices?

Who can make a design, here as mentioned above, I think we need access to the confirm users at least and the moderators.

I had also added sections taking into account requests in the form of vote submission on this page The basics of Coda and here Need help? if someone has a specific question on a topic too specific to find an answer elsewhere.

The votes would be counted for example every 2 weeks and once the result is obtained, an explanation on the subject would be given in the canvas by a confirmed person/moderator.

What happens if we find something wrong, disagree with the content or there is actively malicious content?

I really hope that this multilingual community wiki will not be a space where people will beat each other up :slight_smile: for a yes or a no.

But in the event that we do find malicious people, I think a form to report the problem would be a solution, but I really hope that doesn’t happen.

As far as pedagogy or good practices are concerned, nobody is perfect and I think that making an example or a detailed explanation is not given to everybody even if you put a lot of willpower.

So, for me, the easiest way to do it would be to provide a notification button to ask the person who made the example to give more details.

Explain why this method and not another one, but if this one is really not well done, we will have to find a solution with the support maybe of another confirmed user/moderator.

I don’t want to worry about CODA either and that’s why I wish they would have taken over the wiki, as they have superior access and will be able to handle any overflow better.

Do we need a to-do list?

That’s a good question :), I had to add a communication section dedicated to confirmed people or moderators that would allow them to say what subject will be treated and by whom.

I really believe that everything is possible as long as you plan the aspects, my experience in the field is very new and therefore, surely insufficient for such a project.

However, I give my all despite my language handicap even if I use a translator :).

This project is really something extraordinary from a social and intellectual point of view.

Alone, I won’t be able to do it, but all together we will build a powerful space where we will get to know each other and build more and more beautiful and professional documents.

So, like you, my answers are long to read and I hope to have answered your questions as well as possible.

Sincerely,

Thierry