[gentoo-user] Re: Labeling reiserfs partitions

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Meino Christian Cramer <Meino.Cramer <at> gmx.de> writes:

> > Sure, I was temporarily 86'd from the list for being
> > a 'bone-head' about iptables.........

This was meant to reference inappropriate 'attitudes'
I unwisely shared openly. It was not 
meant to characterize those persons with questions
and/or language barrier issues.....

> > On another note, frequent  creation and updates to 
> > wikis allows for quick responses to these sort
> > of recurring questions.  If the talented
> > folks create such wiki pages, the bone-heads could 
> > easily learn to refer questions to the wikis in
> > lieu of all of this repetition and misguided
> > responses.... Furthermore, ordinary gentoo-linux
> > readers could volunteer to maintain these wikis,
> > thus reducing the burden on the pool-o-genius.....
> > Perhaps a tool like eix/esearch that first
> > (priortizes) searches for official/unofficial wiki-responsed 
> > to these common questions?

> There are three common problems left for those like me asking
> "repetitioned questions":

> 1.) Most search engines of wikis are as "bone-headed" as those trying 
>     to answer the question like the above example. Search engines dont 
>     understand any context.

this is not a search engine proposal. I use the word 'search' in
its generic meaning, not specifically relating to 'search-engines'.

> 2.) For one not being a native English speaker it is often difficult
>     to get the right words for the right match.

English (US) is my native language. Struggles with english accompany
most of us, our entire life. Get use to struggles with english.

> 3.) Sometimes one can describe the problem without the faintest idea
>     of any keyword to be filled into such [CENSORED] search engines.

And that is solved and refined during the ordinary discussions
on gentoo-user.

> Without the evolution of search engine into finding enginges mailing
> lists will exist, where questions are answered more than once.

Maybe I did not articulate the idea clearly. It would not use
traditional search engines, such as google, Jeeves.......

It would be a gentoo tool that runs on your machine like 'eix'

call it 'eix-help <keyword> '

where a typical  keyword might be drive/harddrive/ATA/scsi/ide

so a listed of all of the official and testing
wikis that related to these keywords would be listed. The index 
could be a brief description of the wiki.

Here's a simple script written by Ciaran that allos searching
to get the meanings on the flags. It was posted to this gentoo-user
group some time ago. I put in rooot's .bashrc:

# USE flag settings hack by Ciaran McCreesh:
explainuseflag(){ sed -ne "s,^\([^ ]*:\)\?$1 - ,,p" $(portageq portdir)/prof
iles/use.{,local.}desc; }
alias ef="explainuseflag"
#

So when I want to know what a flag does all I type is

ef <flag>

For example

'ef x264' reveals multiple listings:
Enables h264 encoding using x264 (FFmpeg code)
Enables h264 encoding using x264
Enable x264 codec for mp4live (using x264-svn)
Enables h264 encoding using x264

hmmm, more than one explaination for a flag?



Simple, quite useful and scriptable.


There are lots of folks that answer similar questions over and over
again. Sometimes the answer is long, content-rich, and very
informative, even to those with experience. These 'perls' quickly get 
lost if not harvested quickly.
The linux.gentoo.user search engine I use at gmane.org,
is less than robust, but, at least it is limited to this gentoo-user
list of postings.

Restated simply, I'm suggesting:

1. A simple wiki template be created/cited as a reference for
quick documentation creation.

2. Individuals with some measure of experience/ability populate
the template with subject matter specific information, 
primarily gleaned from this
gentoo-user forum, supplemented with other knowledge.

3. A few keywords be included at the beginning of the wiki.

4. A simple tool/scipt could index these wikis according
to the number of keyword matches; and/or the priorty match
of keywords (that is the most relevant keywords would be
placed a the beginning of the keyword list for a given
specific wiki). The more keyword matches the higher order 
a given wiki would appear in the indexed search result.
(This is not the result of a 'search-engine' search, rather
a result from using a script on your gentoo system' A file
listing somewhat like /var/lib/portage/world could
be employed.

5. Allow ordinary gentoo-users to maintain the wikis, that
is those with reasonable skills and a login/passwd to 
bugs.gentoo.org as an example of a simple control mechanism.

6. Monthly, have a 'higher level' review of the wikis by those
with strong skills to ensure the wikis are current, relevant
and useful. Just look at all those wikis related to
ati/nvidia/xorg and tell me they are all current? Some do
depend on the version of xorg you are running, but they
do not alway clearly state this. Person with extreme knowledge
get too busy to maintain their initial wiki creations, but,
folks that use them are more likely to maintain those docs
and add extra information.


This sort of mechanism would encourage others to participate
in creating a gentoo documentation engine that perpetuates
itself by attracting new folks. Helping them learn through
practical examples and grow, until they start coding and 
'move up' the gentoo expertise ladder say to creating 
ebuilds for testing. It certainly would attact more
folks to gentoo as users.

Also, this sort of structure would enable many more folks
to contribute to gentoo, and those persons with deep skills
could gently correct those with good intentions via documents/wikis.


Who knows if something is created and focused 'on the little 
people' then google just might fund it via their 
'summer of coding' program for aspiring young minds....

just a thought,
ymmv,
hth,
and #!world_peace

James






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