Having just found LimeSurvey less than a week ago, I was a bit confused by some of the concepts. I see people asking about Questions, Question Types, Answers, and Label Sets in this forum, so I know I'm not alone. Once I understood what was in front of me I started documenting it for myself and anyone else who is and will be in the same position.

I've been working on a new wiki page and welcome comments here or via PM. The current page will get more material, some screenshots, and based on feedback I'll start making changes to related wiki pages, linking in both directions, and combining material. Eventually my page shouldn't be a separate/supplemental resource.

If you can write about some other topic, maybe improve explanations for some other commonly discussed feature, the wiki is there and anyone can contribute material.

Admins - is there a better place to go to discuss the wiki? Would it be worth it to create a new forum category just for people to ask questions about the wiki, making contributions, or requesting more info about some topic?

starbuck wrote:
I've been working on a new wiki page and welcome comments here or via PM. The current page will get more material, some screenshots, and based on feedback I'll start making changes to related wiki pages, linking in both directions, and combining material. Eventually my page shouldn't be a separate/supplemental resource.
The page looks good. Screenshots are very important to show users how it works "in real", good idea.
If you have any questions about the wiki just ask.

Admins - is there a better place to go to discuss the wiki? Would it be worth it to create a new forum category just for people to ask questions about the wiki, making contributions, or requesting more info about some topic?
As we have just opened the wiki for every user without registration it might be good to setup a help page within the wiki. I think it would be best to collect questions regarding the wiki there but I will talk to c_schmitz (project leader) about this the next days and report back soon.

Thanks for all your efforts to make limesurvey even better!

It's been a while since this thread was last updated. I'm going to get back into it very soon and I'll be looking around for notes from people who would like to see specific information in the wiki. Please post to the forum and PM me if there is something older that you think should be included.
Thanks!

Hey starbuck,

nice to have you back!

I just talked with c_schmitz (project leader) and we came to the conclusion that there is a lot of redundant information.
If you take a look at this four pages you'll see what I mean:

1. Another explanation of Questions and Answers

2. LimeSurvey Question Types

3. Question Types

4. Question Attributes

The question is: How can we bring together this information?

My suggestion:

- #2 should be completely deleted but we should definately take over the pictures which are not included in #3 yet.

- #1, #3 and #4 should be linked to each other and to "Adding a question", too.

- starbucks great wiki page (#1) will be improved and used as an extended version of #3 and #4 which just sum up the most important things that are needed for a fast question set up.

- We should create a sample survey which includes all question types in the order they are mentioned at #1/#3. This has to be linked to other wiki pages, too

Any further ideas?

Some more input from the forum that points to problems using the manual:

- Dual Scale

- Multiple Numerical (I had to search a lot myself)

I will continue to post forum questions regarding this issue to see where our users have problems in understanding the manual.

If I'm not overlooking something the "Dual Scale Matrix" question type isn't listed in the general manual. Am I right?

It's only listed at starbuck's wiki page. So we should add some information to the general wiki page (and screenshots if possible)!

All notes acknowledged. And thanks for the update to the "Another explanation page". I'll spend some time on this over the weekend.

Off hand I don't think there is a problem with some redundancy as long topics link back and forth to one another. Sometimes it's helpful to just have another explanation in different words to help clarify a point, and that's really what I was attempting to do. That said, if new text doesn't contribute anything significant to old text then it should be re-evaluated and merged. I'll see what I can do to compromise on these and ensure I have good reasoning for providing supplements where they are provided.

A link to a sample survey is a good idea, with corresponding links from the wiki. I can host this on my website but I think it would be better to host it here. How can we handle that?

Thanks for the links to the other quotes showing usability troubles. Any confusion about "how do I..." is an opportunity to update the wiki as soon as the answer is available. After I get my part of the doc updated I'll subscribe to the forum and try to keep an eye out for examples of issues like this that can be helped with better docs. I don't like "RTM" responses, but better docs and pointers back to the doc help to eliminate a lot of forum posts. I see some forums overrun with FAQs simply because they have poor docs. It's a huge waste of everyone's time.

Regards,
--S

starbuck wrote:

A link to a sample survey is a good idea, with corresponding links from the wiki. I can host this on my website but I think it would be better to host it here. How can we handle that?

I think we can create a sample survey at demo.limesurvey.org (username = admin, password = test). We should create a backup of this survey because this side can be accessed by everyone. It's also useful to take missing screenshots from this survey so that users can see the questions "in action".