Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] an official Gentoo wiki

[Zeerak Mustafa Waseem <zeerak.w@gmail.com>]

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On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 11:21:13PM +0100, AllenJB wrote:

> The way I see it, the "official" wiki has to earn my respect as a
> project. The unofficial wiki already has already been through this
> process. It's no different whether I'm trying a new piece of software or
> a new distro.
>
> It's not the URL that bothers me. I will, as I have said, quite happily
> move the articles I've written over, relicensing what I can if
> necessary, if/when I believe that the community would benefit.
>
> My problem is with the attitude of "let's start the official wiki by
> taking the content of the unofficial wiki, regardless of the wishes of
> the active contributors of those articles".
> 

Ah yeah, I should have been more specific with what I meant. What I wanted to ask (but looking back on my mail, not what I did ask) is, what is to stop the community at the unofficial wiki to migrate to the new wiki early in the project?
I don't know what you require for the new wiki to be able to gain your respect, but I imagine (wild guessing based on what it would take for it to gain my respect) that one thing is that it has quality articles, I also assume that another is activity. But in that regard, what you and the rest of the community have brought to gentoo-wiki would be a wonderful place to start for the official wiki.
I don't mean your articles, well your articles as well but not necessarily the article, I primarily mean a community well adjusted to working with a gentoo-specific wiki. You guys have provided some good articles and having your contribution (in form of willingness to work with the new wiki) would be a great asset, in my opinion anyway. 
 
I can understand that you have a problem with it if the first step is taking your work, but what if you were one of the first steps. I mean a successful wiki would be a wiki with an active usergroup (the unofficial one has that), good accurate articles (the unofficial wiki has that as well), and a decent rate of visitors (the articles are useful and relevant) and again, the unofficial wiki has that. You basically have what is necessary for gentoo to grow in this aspect. So the question ends up being, why wait for someone else to prove to you what you can prove to others? (And indeed have proven to others.) If your requirements for the official wiki to gain your respect are the same as mine, then why not help make sure that it meets those requirements?

> Yes, the license may allow you to do this, and legally you might be able
> to do so under the license. But the legal license and ethics/morals
> involved in such action are different things.
> 
> As I see it, the purpose of licensing my articles under an open license
> is to allow them to be contributed to and read without issues in the
> eventuality that the current wiki is lost for any reason (tho this is
> highly unlikely to happen again in the forseeable future as I and others
> now actively backup the content of the wiki, and the server maintainer
> has much better full backups in place) or the event that I am "hit by a
> bus".
> 

But in the end you have no control over who copies it. I mean hell, I could start a blog/wiki/whatever else and copy the contents of the unofficial wiki over. And in the end you can't (and by my estimate shouldn't) complain as you knew the terms when you entered, and if not you could stop any time you realized the terms. Whether or not they're contributed to another place than where you put them up, is what you agreed to.
I don't see any moral or ethical issues in this. I can understand why it might upset you, but in the end when you release something under a license that allows copying and editing it must be a situation you're prepared for. I do however see why you mgiht find it distasteful.

> 
> If those who wish to run an official wiki can see no sensible starting
> point other than copying the content of the unofficial wiki, then I
> would bring into question what the point of an official wiki would be,
> and why should the Gentoo developers psend time and resources on
> duplicating the efforts of the community when there is a huge long list
> of other things they could do that would provide services to the
> community that are not already catered for.
> 
> AllenJB
> 

+1 I completely agree with you, there is one reason as I can see it though. As it is at the moment there isn't a recommendation to help out with the unofficial wiki, if it became (part of) the official wiki such a recommendation would be put forth (I imagine). But then, a recommendation could be put forth now :-)
But other than that, I completely agree with you.

-- 
Zeerak Waseem

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