Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Iain Buchanan <iaindb@netspace.net.au>]

Hi,

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:45:32 -0500
> Mark Loeser<halcy0n@gentoo.org>  wrote:
>> What are others feelings on this?  What issues do you see with having
>> a wiki?  Do you see anyway to resolve the issue you see with us
>> having a wiki?
>
> What will policy on articles that are horribly dangerous or outright
> wrong?

see my previous email - wikipedia looks like they're writing a robot to 
deal with "Articles that need attention"[1].  We could do the same, 
there's nothing stopping us from deleting "really bad" pages.  (archives 
are always available for someone who wants to revive and improve them).

There's also the huge amount of "Cleanup tags"[2] which I really like 
(the principle, not the huge amount).  We could tailor this however we 
wanted.

 >  Is Gentoo prepared to block or warn about articles that recommend
 > stupid things?

I think we definitely should.  Someone needs to discover that the 
article does so first!

 >  If a warning is used, what will be used to distinguish
 > between a generic "wiki, not necessarily checked by sane people" and a
 > "article known to be horrible"?

Cleanup tags!  One for each.  Nice notice written at the top of the 
article saying exactly what you've said.

> The problem with wikis is that enough of them contain enough good
> information that people assume that all of them are entirely correct.

sure, but isn't that similar to, say, a forum?

> Even if warnings are used, the assumption is often "well I was warned
> about another article too and that turned out OK so I can ignore the
> warning".

sure, some users are idiots :)  Better idiot proofing doesn't protect 
you - it only creates better idiots. (I don't have a reference for this 
one).

>  And whilst it might be OK for some people to say "well, we
> warned you, so tough luck", it makes life very difficult for developers
> who end up having to deal with hordes of users with broken systems...

I agree "tough luck" might be a response by some, so the user will go to 
the next person to help.  I don't think this would necessarily fall back 
to developers.  Just like forums, mailing lists and the current wiki, 
there is good and bad advice.  From my experience on the gentoo-user 
list, bad advice generally gets noticed and corrected reasonably 
quickly.  Even big stuffups (oops I unmerged python) are helped.

There is a good culture on the user list which still calls an idiot an 
idiot.  The common one being people using ~ARCH on a remote production 
box, then complaining it broke for a ~ related reason, adding that they 
have no physical access (it happens often enough).  The usual response 
is "you shouldn't have done it, you were warned, here's how to fix it". 
  I see no problem with this.

 >  it makes life very difficult for developers
 > who end up having to deal with hordes of users with broken systems...

The only place where I could see specific developer loading, is users 
who take their problems as a result of following bad advice to bugzilla. 
  I wouldn't expect the hordes would go there first...

Anyway, the wiki exists with all it's "bad advice" already.  Making it 
official would only improve it and hence "reduce developer loading", IMHO.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup_resources

cya,
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.
		-- Oscar Wilde