From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OLbQM-0008Cg-94 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:27:26 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 521BBE0B0E; Mon, 7 Jun 2010 12:27:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail1.nippynetworks.com (mail1.nippynetworks.com [212.227.250.41]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 511A6E0AED for ; Mon, 7 Jun 2010 12:27:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (mail1.nippynetworks.com [127.0.0.1]) by mail1.nippynetworks.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C35F4674129 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 2010 13:27:17 +0100 (BST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at nippynetworks.com Received: from mail1.nippynetworks.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mail1.nippynetworks.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id Zbtr3CXJFlNQ for ; Mon, 7 Jun 2010 13:27:17 +0100 (BST) Received: from Ed-Wildgooses-MacBook-Pro.local (office.nippynetworks.com [94.194.201.187]) (Authenticated sender: edward@wildgooses.com) by mail1.nippynetworks.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6E57B6740D0 for ; Mon, 7 Jun 2010 13:27:17 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <4C0CE5A4.6080801@wildgooses.com> Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:27:16 +0100 From: Ed W User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] an official Gentoo wiki References: <20100403163010.1897d663@mail.a3li.li> <4BB7D11F.7060207@gentoo.org> <20100404003152.4b2012da@angelstorm> <20100404123323.1689e9d4@angelstorm> <20100404181333.6dab27c2@angelstorm> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 45d5c4bc-975c-4b7f-874f-b2bf84c517e3 X-Archives-Hash: bc78c7174288376d5243b2b15b84fc88 On 05/04/2010 03:43, Ben de Groot wrote: > On 5 April 2010 03:13, Joshua Saddler wrote: > >> Let the renderer take care of the final rendering, as really, tags and markup are all arbitrary. What should matter is how it appears in your webbrowser, since that'll vary from the source view anyways. >> > So why are you such a staunch defender of GuideXML then? If markup is > arbitrary really, then why not allow people to use what is convenient? > > I do think arguing about the syntax is the wrong target (as I think you agree above). The magic of a wiki is: - Focus on the text and not on the formatting - Goal of simplicity to bang in a bunch of content without needing to worry about formatting - Granularity of edits, eg edit a single word and not get overwritten by another change which edits a different single word - Web based editing from any machine without installing stuff - Extremely low barriers to contributing I think these goals could be satisfied by a decent system around GuideXML as much as from an arbitrary Wiki engine? The real magic is in getting lots of users to start contributing and that largely comes from having very few barriers to contributing. If you remember the original Wikipedia it involved requiring to pass some tests to become a contributor and it was basically a closed editor system. It failed dismally... The revamped wikipedia allowed anyone to edit and whilst we can debate the merits of the final product, it's certainly been popular. So I claim that low barriers to entry and ease of editing is the real target - the markup is important, but definitely secondary to the engine itself Good luck Ed W