[gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Mark Loeser]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1137 bytes --]

So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away from
our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we should
consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute to.
We already have something very similar to this on the forums, and this
would just give the correct tool to put their documentation on.

I already know some people are going to hate this idea and say that the
documentation could be wrong, etc, so lets look at how others have
handled this situation.  It seems that Ubuntu has their own official
documentation section and a community section where users can contribute
to.  We can put a nice big warning saying that the user documentation
may have some errors, and that any such errors should not be directed at
the maintainers of the package or the GDP.

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?

-- 
Mark Loeser
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
email         -   mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://www.halcy0n.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Joe Peterson]

Mark Loeser 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?

+1!  I have set up several wikis for work projects and used many others
to great benefit.  Even those (on my work projects) who were skeptical
at first warmed to the idea and quickly became dependent on such tools.

As for Wikipedia, there is always the fear that the info will be
incorrect, but time has shown that wikis tend to be very accurate and
get corrected quickly when not.

					-Joe

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Josh Saddler]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1345 bytes --]

Mark Loeser wrote:
> So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away from
> our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we should
> consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute to.
> We already have something very similar to this on the forums, and this
> would just give the correct tool to put their documentation on.
> 
> I already know some people are going to hate this idea and say that the
> documentation could be wrong, etc, so lets look at how others have
> handled this situation.  It seems that Ubuntu has their own official
> documentation section and a community section where users can contribute
> to.  We can put a nice big warning saying that the user documentation
> may have some errors, and that any such errors should not be directed at
> the maintainers of the package or the GDP.
> 
> 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?
> 

I've asked my fellow GDP members to weigh in on this issue on our ML;
the discussion is already in-progress here:

http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-doc/msg_dd4f573fc6384108fdf14dfa27030906.xml

Or, if you like it gmane-style:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.documentation/2903


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Ferris McCormick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1820 bytes --]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:45:32 -0500
Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> wrote:

> So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away from
> our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we should
> consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute to.
> We already have something very similar to this on the forums, and this
> would just give the correct tool to put their documentation on.
> 
> I already know some people are going to hate this idea and say that the
> documentation could be wrong, etc, so lets look at how others have
> handled this situation.  It seems that Ubuntu has their own official
> documentation section and a community section where users can contribute
> to.  We can put a nice big warning saying that the user documentation
> may have some errors, and that any such errors should not be directed at
> the maintainers of the package or the GDP.
> 
> 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?
> 

I'm for it.  I think the positives --- more communications paths,
community building, providing something our users want --- outweigh the
negatives (entries might be incorrect or irrelevant or whatever).  I
think it's understood that contributions might contain errors, but the
can be corrected.  I don't know about Ubuntu's community section, but I
do find Wikipedia very useful even though I know it might be wrong. :)

> -- 
> Mark Loeser
> email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
> email         -   mark AT halcy0n DOT com
> web           -   http://www.halcy0n.com

Regards,
Ferris
--
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Iain Buchanan]

Mark Loeser wrote:
> So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away from
> our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we should
> consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute to.
> We already have something very similar to this on the forums, and this
> would just give the correct tool to put their documentation on.
>
> I already know some people are going to hate this idea and say that the
> documentation could be wrong, etc, so lets look at how others have
> handled this situation.
[snip]

IMHO, the old gentoo-wiki (don't know if the new one will address it) 
does let you down when pages are out of date.

The solution I like is the wikipedia idea: There is a tag for marking 
pages as outdated / inaccurate, and if a page has the outdated tag for 
too long it's removed / archived.

Much like treecleaning!
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

You know you're using the computer too much when:
refer to traffic lights as routers.
	-- C J Pro

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Ciaran McCreesh]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1076 bytes --]

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

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

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Robin H. Johnson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1350 bytes --]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 08:39:41PM -0600, Jeremy Olexa wrote:
> I am throwing this out there, can we ask Mike Valstar for a dump of all his 
> stuff, slap it on gentoo hardware under a wiki.gentoo.org link?
>
> It could be a "community building" experience and offering the
> stability of gentoo hardware to a service like gentoo-wiki. Maybe also
> invite Mike to be the admin of said hardware, etc. Thoughts?
I'd like to answer this on two fronts.

As infra, I did offer hosting to Mike Valstar shortly after their
downtime started. However he turned me down as somebody else offered him
much beefier hardware (overkill hardware in my personal opinion). An
additional minor concern were the Google ads he runs, which might not be
possible at some of our sponsors.

My offer for remote backups for him still stands, and I have not
received any response on it from Mike.

Additionally, there are license concerns about their existing content,
as it was originally one license, and was then blanket re-licensed (see
the mails on the gentoo-doc list for more details). Any new Gentoo-run
wiki could enforce our docs license of CC-Attribution/ShareALike from
the start.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 329 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Iain Buchanan]

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

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Jeremy Olexa]

Mark Loeser wrote:
> So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away from
> our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we should
> consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute to.
> We already have something very similar to this on the forums, and this
> would just give the correct tool to put their documentation on.
> 
> I already know some people are going to hate this idea and say that the
> documentation could be wrong, etc, so lets look at how others have
> handled this situation.  It seems that Ubuntu has their own official
> documentation section and a community section where users can contribute
> to.  We can put a nice big warning saying that the user documentation
> may have some errors, and that any such errors should not be directed at
> the maintainers of the package or the GDP.
> 
> 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?
> 

I have been following gentoo-wiki's new procedures and rebuild process 
and I think they are on a good track right now.

I am throwing this out there, can we ask Mike Valstar for a dump of all 
his stuff, slap it on gentoo hardware under a wiki.gentoo.org link? It 
could be a "community building" experience and offering the stability of 
gentoo hardware to a service like gentoo-wiki. Maybe also invite Mike to 
be the admin of said hardware, etc. Thoughts?

(I don't know what a community wiki would require for infra hardware, 
maybe someone will chime in)

2 cents,
Jeremy

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Michael Hammer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 811 bytes --]

* Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> [081112 00:46]: 
> What are others feelings on this?  

I like the idea!

> What issues do you see with having a wiki?  

Pages of poor quality with wrong informations.

> Do you see anyway to resolve the issue you see with us having a
> wiki?

We should develop some kind of review process and at least the
possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
infos provided have a minimum of quality.

g, mueli

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hammer    |    <mueli@gentoo.org>     |     Graz, AT
Gentoo Developer (Kerberos)  |  http://www.michael-hammer.at

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Eray Aslan]

On 12.11.2008 11:44, Michael Hammer wrote:
> * Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> [081112 00:46]: 
>> What are others feelings on this?  
> 
> I like the idea!
> 
>> What issues do you see with having a wiki?  
> 
> Pages of poor quality with wrong informations.
> 
>> Do you see anyway to resolve the issue you see with us having a
>> wiki?
> 
> We should develop some kind of review process 

Ugh, got lots of free time?  If you want to help, provide hosting or
such.  A hands off approach should be preferred for wiki.  We know it is
written by users and some poor quality and even wrong info is expected.
 Wikis are good for pointers and ideas only.  We know that and act
accordingly.  Moreover, we have official gentoo docs anyway.

Developer time is better spent doing, well, developer stuff rather than
reviewing some wiki.  If you insist on review, it will be at best a
stale small site and at worst will cut into your developer time.

For what it is worth, as a user I vote you spend time developing gentoo.
-- 
Eray

> and at least the
> possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
> the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
> section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
> infos provided have a minimum of quality.
> 
> g, mueli
> 

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Petteri Räty]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 758 bytes --]

Michael Hammer wrote:
> * Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> [081112 00:46]: 
>> What are others feelings on this?  
> 
> I like the idea!
> 
>> What issues do you see with having a wiki?  
> 
> Pages of poor quality with wrong informations.
> 
>> Do you see anyway to resolve the issue you see with us having a
>> wiki?
> 
> We should develop some kind of review process and at least the
> possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
> the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
> section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
> infos provided have a minimum of quality.
> 
> g, mueli
> 

We already have a reviewed section. It's called GDP.

Regards,
Petteri


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Gokdeniz Karadag]

Petteri Räty demis ki::
> Michael Hammer wrote:
>> * Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> [081112 00:46]: 
>>> What are others feelings on this?  
>> I like the idea!
>>
>>> What issues do you see with having a wiki?  
>> Pages of poor quality with wrong informations.
>>
>>> Do you see anyway to resolve the issue you see with us having a
>>> wiki?
>> We should develop some kind of review process and at least the
>> possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
>> the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
>> section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
>> infos provided have a minimum of quality.
>>
>> g, mueli
>>
> 
> We already have a reviewed section. It's called GDP.
> 
> Regards,
> Petteri
> 

The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, which can
become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by developers.

-- 
Gokdeniz Karadag

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Michael Hammer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1313 bytes --]

* Gokdeniz Karadag <gokdeniz@ceng.metu.edu.tr> [081112 13:06]:
> Petteri Räty demis ki::
> > Michael Hammer wrote:
> > We should develop some kind of review process and at least the
> > possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
> > the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
> > section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
> > infos provided have a minimum of quality.
> > 
> > We already have a reviewed section. It's called GDP.

You're fully right! The GDP can therefore be the reviewed sections
where documents from the wiki are transfered to.

> The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, which can
> become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by developers.

That's the way I intended my proposal. As some kind of early state GDP
documents. It's an unwritten fact that user are willing to contribute
to wiki systems - but I've never received an xml file for our GDP
written by a user ;) ... The wiki can be the place to develop new
howtos by disburding the devs - IMHO.

g, mueli

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hammer    |    <mueli@gentoo.org>     |     Graz, AT
Gentoo Developer (Kerberos)  |  http://www.michael-hammer.at

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

[gentoo-dev] Re: An official Gentoo wiki

[Christian Faulhammer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 957 bytes --]

Hi,

Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org>:
> I have been following gentoo-wiki's new procedures and rebuild
> process and I think they are on a good track right now.
> 
> I am throwing this out there, can we ask Mike Valstar for a dump of
> all his stuff, slap it on gentoo hardware under a wiki.gentoo.org
> link? It could be a "community building" experience and offering the
> stability of gentoo hardware to a service like gentoo-wiki. Maybe
> also invite Mike to be the admin of said hardware, etc. Thoughts?
> 
> (I don't know what a community wiki would require for infra hardware, 
> maybe someone will chime in)

 As a gesture it might be great to have him onboard, even without all
the contents from his Wiki.  But interesting to see that Robin is ahead
of us all. :)

V-Li

-- 
Christian Faulhammer, Gentoo Lisp project
<URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode

<URL:http://www.faulhammer.org/>

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Jan Kundrát]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1020 bytes --]

Michael Hammer wrote:
>> The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, which can
>> become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by developers.

...as long as they use a compatible license, is not the case right now 
(and never was, IIRC).

> That's the way I intended my proposal. As some kind of early state GDP
> documents. It's an unwritten fact that user are willing to contribute
> to wiki systems - but I've never received an xml file for our GDP
> written by a user ;) ... The wiki can be the place to develop new
> howtos by disburding the devs - IMHO.

Contrary to popular belief, we (the GDP) don't require submissions in 
any particular format. We have plenty of monkeys that can convert just 
about anything to our fancy internal format. We do our best to 
communicate this fact to other people in Gentoo, but apparently it's a 
tough job, as I don't recall much submissions in non-XML form.

Cheers,
-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Ben Sanchez]

Are you considering to replace the mediawiki with a different wiki system such 
as moinmoin?

On Wednesday 12 November 2008 7:49:58 am Michael Hammer wrote:
> * Gokdeniz Karadag <gokdeniz@ceng.metu.edu.tr> [081112 13:06]:
> > Petteri Räty demis ki::
> > > Michael Hammer wrote:
> > > We should develop some kind of review process and at least the
> > > possiblity to lock and hide pages of poor quality. In the most cases
> > > the howtos are related to some herds. What if we have a "reviewed
> > > section" where herds can approve pages and user can be sure that the
> > > infos provided have a minimum of quality.
> > >
> > > We already have a reviewed section. It's called GDP.
>
> You're fully right! The GDP can therefore be the reviewed sections
> where documents from the wiki are transfered to.
>
> > The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, which
> > can become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by
> > developers.
>
> That's the way I intended my proposal. As some kind of early state GDP
> documents. It's an unwritten fact that user are willing to contribute
> to wiki systems - but I've never received an xml file for our GDP
> written by a user ;) ... The wiki can be the place to develop new
> howtos by disburding the devs - IMHO.
>
> g, mueli

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Josh Saddler]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1851 bytes --]

Gokdeniz Karadag wrote:
> The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, which can
> become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by developers.

. . . no, I'd think not.

It takes time and effort to produce one of our polished, professional
documents. That's duplicating the time and effort that it takes to write
a decent wiki article -- pointless duplication.

One of the things I'm hearing from just about every other user and
developer is that users would be providing the peer review necessary to
keep documents at a general level of quality. This means "let the wiki
live its wiki life," which means there's no need to reformat the article
as something else. If it's a decent wiki article, then it should stand
on its own merits....as a wiki article, nothing else. It's a community
contributed article on the community-contributed resource. That's where
it belongs.

Most folks have said they're okay with official Gentoo documentation and
a second community-contributed resource (that may not be as accurate,
tested, readable, etc.) So keep that system around. If you want to jot
up a quick howto, or an article filled with individual speculation and
anecdotes, keep it on the wiki. If you want a doc to be considered *the*
authority on its subject (such as
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xfce-config.xml ;)), maintained by Gentoo
developers, then submit it to the GDP via bugzilla, or provide updates
to one of the docs we already have.

There really is no reason why we can't have this split. There's no need
to XMLify every halfway decent wiki article just because it's so much
better than everything else on the wiki. Trying to do so involves an
inordinate number of work hours and staff that we just don't have, not
to mention greatly raising the existing maintainer burden.


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Joe Peterson]

Josh Saddler wrote:
> It takes time and effort to produce one of our polished, professional
> documents. That's duplicating the time and effort that it takes to write
> a decent wiki article -- pointless duplication.
> 
> One of the things I'm hearing from just about every other user and
> developer is that users would be providing the peer review necessary to
> keep documents at a general level of quality. This means "let the wiki
> live its wiki life," which means there's no need to reformat the article
> as something else. If it's a decent wiki article, then it should stand
> on its own merits....as a wiki article, nothing else. It's a community
> contributed article on the community-contributed resource. That's where
> it belongs.
> 
> Most folks have said they're okay with official Gentoo documentation and
> a second community-contributed resource (that may not be as accurate,
> tested, readable, etc.) So keep that system around. If you want to jot
> up a quick howto, or an article filled with individual speculation and
> anecdotes, keep it on the wiki. If you want a doc to be considered *the*
> authority on its subject (such as
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xfce-config.xml ;)), maintained by Gentoo
> developers, then submit it to the GDP via bugzilla, or provide updates
> to one of the docs we already have.
> 
> There really is no reason why we can't have this split. There's no need
> to XMLify every halfway decent wiki article just because it's so much
> better than everything else on the wiki. Trying to do so involves an
> inordinate number of work hours and staff that we just don't have, not
> to mention greatly raising the existing maintainer burden.

++  Good plan.

	-Joe

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[kashani]

Jan Kundrát wrote:
> Michael Hammer wrote:
>>> The wiki can be a staging ground for user contributed documents, 
>>> which can
>>> become part of official docs after a review and cleanup by developers.
> 
> ...as long as they use a compatible license, is not the case right now 
> (and never was, IIRC).
> 
>> That's the way I intended my proposal. As some kind of early state GDP
>> documents. It's an unwritten fact that user are willing to contribute
>> to wiki systems - but I've never received an xml file for our GDP
>> written by a user ;) ... The wiki can be the place to develop new
>> howtos by disburding the devs - IMHO.
> 
> Contrary to popular belief, we (the GDP) don't require submissions in 
> any particular format. We have plenty of monkeys that can convert just 
> about anything to our fancy internal format. We do our best to 
> communicate this fact to other people in Gentoo, but apparently it's a 
> tough job, as I don't recall much submissions in non-XML form.

	How easy is it to checkout current GDP docs and make changes to them? I 
believe I looked into updating the old and crufty Virtual Mail How-to 
and decided it was easier to create a new one at gentoo-wiki.

kashani

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Jan Kundrát]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 315 bytes --]

kashani wrote:
>     How easy is it to checkout current GDP docs

Append "?passthru=1" to the end of the URL.

> and make changes to them?

I take it you want to make a patch. In such case, edit the file and 
submit the diff via Bugzilla.

Cheers,
-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Roy Bamford]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 2008.11.11 23:45, Mark Loeser wrote:
> So, gentoo-wiki.com went down for a awhile and took something away
> from
> our users something that is useful.  Its back now, but I think we
> should
> consider having our own official wiki that our users can contribute
> to.
[snip]
> 
> -- 
> Mark Loeser
> email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
> email         -   mark AT halcy0n DOT com
> web           -   http://www.halcy0n.com
> 

Mark,

If we can migrate the new gentoo-wiki into Gentoo, I'm all for it 
but I'm against having two wikis for the same purpose.

I don't see a wiki of any sort adding to the developer burden.
We would recruit to staff it just as we recruit to staff any other 
project.

There is nothing wrong with having two standards of documentation.

- -- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(NeddySeagoon) a member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
treecleaners
trustees
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkkbaiIACgkQTE4/y7nJvatXNQCfWIQObH+dZ0Tu8Lc1JK0Ccpoh
KUwAnRHCCtLYplYSOEsATyUHIS7mi/83
=xBMy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Tobias Scherbaum]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1095 bytes --]

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

Wikipedia started using an extension for marking pages as "validated".
See [1]. This would allow us to setup a group of "trusted
people" (developers, long-time users, well-known contributors - for
example) who would be able to review pages and tag them that way.
Non-reviewed pages could show a header then clearly stating that this
specific page hasn't been reviewed and might contain inaccurate
information.

  Tobias

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs


[-- Attachment #2: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Petteri Räty]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 375 bytes --]

Jan Kundrát wrote:
> kashani wrote:
>>     How easy is it to checkout current GDP docs
> 
> Append "?passthru=1" to the end of the URL.
> 
>> and make changes to them?
> 
> I take it you want to make a patch. In such case, edit the file and
> submit the diff via Bugzilla.
> 
> Cheers,
> -jkt
> 

Or use anoncvs for the gentoo module.

Regards,
Petteri


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

[gentoo-dev] Re: An official Gentoo wiki

[Duncan]

Tobias Scherbaum <dertobi123@gentoo.org> posted
1226596898.3918.4.camel@homer.ob.libexec.de, excerpted below, on  Thu, 13
Nov 2008 18:21:38 +0100:

> Wikipedia started using an extension for marking pages as "validated".
> See [1]. This would allow us to setup a group of "trusted people"
> (developers, long-time users, well-known contributors - for example) who
> would be able to review pages and tag them that way. Non-reviewed pages
> could show a header then clearly stating that this specific page hasn't
> been reviewed and might contain inaccurate information.

That sounds like a useful idea.  They make it the default view.  I think 
I'd prefer a more normal HEAD view, but with a notation at the top 
similar to:

"This wiki page as it appeared on <date> was<link to definition> 
validated</link>. <link to snapshot>Show me the validated version.</link>"

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Donnie Berkholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 521 bytes --]

On 10:44 Wed 12 Nov     , Michael Hammer wrote:
> * Mark Loeser <halcy0n@gentoo.org> [081112 00:46]: 
> > What issues do you see with having a wiki?  
> 
> Pages of poor quality with wrong informations.

The wiki already exists and is popular, so these already happen. Even if 
it's not "official" it says gentoo and people will associate it with 
their Gentoo experience regardless of whether we host it.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] An official Gentoo wiki

[Donnie Berkholz]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 565 bytes --]

On 16:52 Tue 11 Nov     , Joe Peterson wrote:
> As for Wikipedia, there is always the fear that the info will be
> incorrect, but time has shown that wikis tend to be very accurate and
> get corrected quickly when not.

A page's likelihood of correctness is roughly inversely proportional to 
its popularity. Try a specialized topic outside of computers, and there 
may well be errors that only an expert will catch -- others will just be 
deceived.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]