--- /dev/null
+The pages in the basewiki should be fully self-documenting as far as what
+users need to know to edit pages in the wiki. [[HelpOnFormatting]]
+documents the basics, but doesn't include every preprocessor directive.
+
+Note that there's a disctinction between being self-documenting for users,
+and being complete documentation for ikiwiki. The basewiki is _not_
+intended to be the latter, so it lacks the usage page, all the plugin
+pages, etc.
+
+I've made some progress toward making the basewiki self-documenting by moving
+the docs about using templates, shortcuts, and blogs from the plugin pages,
+onto the pages in the basewiki.
+
+Here are some of the things that are not documented in full in the
+basewiki:
+
+ joey@kodama:~/src/ikiwiki/doc/plugins>grep usage *
+ aggregate.mdwn:## usage
+ graphviz.mdwn:page. Example usage:
+ graphviz.mdwn:amounts of processing time and disk usage.
+ img.mdwn:## usage
+ linkmap.mdwn:set of pages in the wiki. Example usage:
+ map.mdwn:This plugin generates a hierarchical page map for the wiki. Example usage:
+ postsparkline.mdwn:# usage
+ sparkline.mdwn:# usage
+ sparkline.mdwn:more detail in [its wiki](http://sparkline.wikispaces.com/usage).
+ table.mdwn:## usage
+
+Meta is another one.
+
+The holdup on documenting these in full in the basewiki is that I'm not sure
+where to put the docs. [[HelpOnFormatting]] should stay as simple as possible
+and just give examples, not full lists of availavle parameters, etc. And
+it's bad enough that [[blog]] uses that toplevel namespace, without adding
+lots more toplevel pages to the basewiki. ([[blog]] really needs to be moved..
+I have several wikis that override it with their actual blog content).
+
+Maybe the thing to do would be to make a meta/ or usage/ or wiki/ or something
+directory in the basewiki, and put new pages documenting how to use preprocesor
+directives in there.
+
+Actually, if we look at the basewiki contents:
+
+ blog.mdwn@ pagespec.mdwn@ subpage@
+ favicon.ico@ preprocessordirective.mdwn@ subpage.mdwn@
+ helponformatting.mdwn@ sandbox.mdwn@ templates/
+ index.mdwn@ shortcuts.mdwn@ templates.mdwn@
+ local.css@ smileys@ wikiicons@
+ markdown.mdwn@ smileys.mdwn@ wikilink.mdwn@
+ openid.mdwn@ style.css@
+
+Most of this is meta stuff. Only index.mdwn, local.css, favicon.ico,
+smileys, wikiicons, shortcuts, and templates are really content/configs that
+are used as the base of a wiki. The rest is documentation.
+
+Moving a lot of these pages could be hard though.. Lots of wikis probably
+link to them. Maybe the directory they're moved to could be in the search
+path, like the userdir is, so that simple links keep working.
+
+See also: [[Conditional_Underlay_Files]]