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krinn
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think this should clearly be state as a drop job.

I personnaly don't care about a wiki (my point of view explain, not the arguement itself to drop it)
I must say such a wiki could be good at first, it's always good to have more source of documentation.
But if it's just to have the same documents as gentoo provide, i don't see any interrest.
If it's to provide bad documents or informations, it keep piss me off with the unofficial wiki, but i'll certainly get mad if it's in an official wiki.
If it's to move dev's work to finally just admin a wiki, that would be bad. I prefer a stable & working nfs server than a nicelly made page that try to help me setup that nfs server just to see it is too bugy to be useable.

(now that's the argument to drop it): Everyone could argue a lot, if it can't be done, it can't be done, so really telling it can't be done will just make it clear. this will end discution/hopes & wait by wiki fans.
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cach0rr0
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I shall plant some seeds and see if I can't get something going, or get a definitive answer one way or another.
I think there's absolutely value in a community-driven wiki, if done right. We'll see, no idea how feasible it is nor where it sits on the priorities list, but I'm happy to talk to folks and try to get some informal conversation going. The end result may well be "we're not sure where it sits on the priorities list yet", but hey, talking about it can't hurt. And of course I am a lowly forum mod, not a decision maker, so this does not mean much yet, but I can at least ask questions ;)
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn,

I view any hypothetical wiki as just an extension of the forums. The content that goes in sticky posts and mini-howtos here are better suited for a wiki, IMHO. This is because a wiki is easier to search, organize and interlink than a forum, as the article URLs have meaningful values.

The old gentoo-wiki was hardly perfect, but that fact that it was used so often by people here on the forums just shows how beneficial even an unmoderated, user-driven wiki would be. This issue is entirely orthogonal to that of official documentation: it is implicitly understood that wiki docs are community-reviewed, not peer-reviewed, just like the forums.

(Perhaps the devs should have their own, dev-only wiki, to make their lives easier -- certainly it can't be harder than organizing information through the documentation page on the Gentoo website.)
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm.. the community is our peers.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hypnos wrote:
Does Arch have more manpower than Gentoo? Their wiki is very nice.

In the sense that Arch includes and empowers their users as additional contributors/developers. Yes.
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree that an official wiki could be extremely useful. It isn't very difficult to do technically or to even set things up initially to be spam resistant while still allowing user participation. I have a few Mediawiki installs and as stated in a previous post some simple precautions have helped keep the spam at bay even while still allowing unregistered users to contribute.

I honestly think at this point someone should just get a working official wiki install up with a sane initial configuration (Even if nearly blank). From there at least the community would have the potential to be able to build it up over time and make further refinements. Perhaps make all the developers, admins, and moderators Wiki Admins as well by default just to get it started. Between all of these people someone will probably be able to find the time to rollback any spam or malicious contributions (in addition on most open wiki installs users can also revert most changes but this is usually configurable). These things usually have to build up over time and it won't be perfect right away. If deemed necessary you could include a header with some sort of disclaimer informing the user that the wiki is in a pre-alpha like state and that other official documentation sources should be relied upon, if available. Once the wiki becomes more stable perhaps remove the warning.
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skellr
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There should be a distro agnostic wiki. It's not like rm or cryptsetup are going to have completely different options on Debian vs Fedora. There is alot of duplicated effort out there already.
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Shining Arcanine
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:
Hypnos wrote:
Does Arch have more manpower than Gentoo? Their wiki is very nice.

In the sense that Arch includes and empowers their users as additional contributors/developers. Yes.


There are users contributing on the bug tracker.
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Arnaudv6
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 7:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love the idea of contributing to a wiki:
  • replaces/deprecates most forum sticky posts
  • lessens forum duplicated answers
  • is right place for generic solutions given in forums
  • is more suited presentation than actual documentation
  • could even replace several sections of the site.
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, one year on. Where are we?
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

<rant ohwhynot="true">
There's a perfectly reasonable wiki already out there.

Yes I know it disappears from time to time, but ... it came back from total disaster at least once. Shows some people care about it.

Like every other wiki, ts obselete in patches; its not usually hard to spot but at the time you're dredging for info there's not usually a lot you can do about it.

Loads of clues though when you're trying to find out how to do something new. Or what you do after emerging something. Like NFS, say. Or iptables?? Nuffin' trivial.

If you want an "official" wiki, just stuffing create one and make it public. Then wait and see. Its not hard. Perficct is possible tho' unlikely.
</rant>
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aidanjt
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

wjb wrote:
<rant ohwhynot="true">
There's a perfectly reasonable wiki already out there.

Yes I know it disappears from time to time

s/from time to time/{frequently,exactly when you need it}/

wjb wrote:
...but ... it came back from total disaster at least once. Shows some people care about it.

Like every other wiki, ts obselete in patches; its not usually hard to spot but at the time you're dredging for info there's not usually a lot you can do about it.

Loads of clues though when you're trying to find out how to do something new. Or what you do after emerging something. Like NFS, say. Or iptables?? Nuffin' trivial.

If you want an "official" wiki, just stuffing create one and make it public. Then wait and see. Its not hard. Perficct is possible tho' unlikely.
</rant>

The whole point of having an official wiki, is that it is actually official, and officially running on official Gentoo infrastructure. Having 2 unreliable, unofficial sites with different content doesn't exactly achieve that.
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cach0rr0
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:

The whole point of having an official wiki, is that it is actually official, and officially running on official Gentoo infrastructure. Having 2 unreliable, unofficial sites with different content doesn't exactly achieve that.


I think as well, with an official wiki, people are going to tend to be more inclined to contribute, if nothing else because it's not particularly likely to go away, plus - silly as this may sound - there's a greater feeling of personal satisfaction knowing you contributed to an official gentoo project.

That's true for me at least, I'd imagine it'd be true for others as well.

I'm going to keep harping on it much as I'm able. Some red tape to sort through (heard all those rants, agree with many of em), but I'm harping on that as well.
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AllenJB
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 12:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

wjb wrote:
<rant ohwhynot="true">
There's a perfectly reasonable wiki already out there.

Yes I know it disappears from time to time, but ... it came back from total disaster at least once. Shows some people care about it.

Like every other wiki, ts obselete in patches; its not usually hard to spot but at the time you're dredging for info there's not usually a lot you can do about it.

Loads of clues though when you're trying to find out how to do something new. Or what you do after emerging something. Like NFS, say. Or iptables?? Nuffin' trivial.

If you want an "official" wiki, just stuffing create one and make it public. Then wait and see. Its not hard. Perficct is possible tho' unlikely.
</rant>


You can't just set up a mediawiki instance and let it loose on the world. There's a large amount of effort that goes in to keeping gentoo-wiki.com as spam free as possible and trying to keep articles organised.

For a new wiki, you've also got to set up a large amount of templates / conventions / guidelines otherwise you'll just end up with an unusuable, unmaintainable mess.


AidanJT wrote:
So, one year on. Where are we?


gentoo-wiki.com is still going strong, still adding new articles, still updating existing ones. Still no other contenders yet.


skellr wrote:
There should be a distro agnostic wiki. It's not like rm or cryptsetup are going to have completely different options on Debian vs Fedora. There is alot of duplicated effort out there already.


The problem with this is that every distro applies different patches, puts files in different places or has a different way of managing things like init scripts. While some things do remain similar, there's still too much that differs for this to work sanely. General purpose documentation for a project is best managed by that project itself. The distro speicfic wikis then deal with more specific guides (many of which involve multiple related packages)
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krinn
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cach0rr0 wrote:
AidanJT wrote:

The whole point of having an official wiki, is that it is actually official, and officially running on official Gentoo infrastructure. Having 2 unreliable, unofficial sites with different content doesn't exactly achieve that.


I think as well, with an official wiki, people are going to tend to be more inclined to contribute, if nothing else because it's not particularly likely to go away, plus - silly as this may sound - there's a greater feeling of personal satisfaction knowing you contributed to an official gentoo project.


you mean it's not enough to contribute the forum to get personal satis.... rant about your post count?

still the main difference between unofficial and an official wiki (as you can expect unofficial writers to contribute to the official one too) is that you need an official entity to review contribution correctness.
This mean limited access to edit, no spam, but sadly an official person (let's get this rought logic, gentoo devs and trustee) to review/correct (and so validate) every entries in that wiki.

you can say it might be a simple task, it's not when you are dead under jobs already.
and a least it might not be an easy task for a wiki that is opening after such long await, as you should expect many (many wiki fans) contributions to review for its opening.

And i'm just speaking about its creation, updating would be a real pain : if a good will dev take his time to add an entry about (as example) openrc, after correct/verify... all is ok, if anything change in a new openrc version (and some programs can change many things from version to version, yep i think about hal/xorg love/hate here). That dev should call the writer for an update and maybe remove the article if no update is made and facing the flames for that.

hihi finally all those wiki fans looks more like a weakness for an official wiki ;)
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
still the main difference between unofficial and an official wiki (as you can expect unofficial writers to contribute to the official one too) is that you need an official entity to review contribution correctness.
This mean limited access to edit, no spam, but sadly an official person (let's get this rought logic, gentoo devs and trustee) to review/correct (and so validate) every entries in that wiki.

Is this what happens with the Arch and Ubuntu wikis? Because their wikis are pretty good; if they don't have dev review, then a Gentoo wiki wouldn't need it either.
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krinn
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i know nothing about arch/ubuntu wiki, i just see how our is going to be :)
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 4:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
i know nothing about arch/ubuntu wiki, i just see how our is going to be :)

Why should it be that way if it doesn't gain you anything?

Anyway, the Ubuntu Wiki is a for the Ubuntu Team only whereas the Arch Wiki is a whole community effort.

I find many useful tips and howtos on the Arch Wiki, and that's how envision the Gentoo wiki to be.
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PostPosted: Sun May 08, 2011 4:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Please, can we stop whining and actually appoint someone to do something :P
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PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2011 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Angrychile wrote:
Please, can we stop whining and actually appoint someone to do something :P

Nobody can do anything while the devs sit on their hands, maintain their user exclusionary behaviour, and only climb out of -dev@g.o to handwave away any dissension.
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2011 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not sure if Gentoo even needs a wiki. I find myself using Arch's wiki for any distribution I use.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 2:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thinking about it now, what could the wikki provide, other than manuals?

Of course, it could provide the manuals, AND the stuff aside it. The more unusual stuff, FAQs, Discussion pages for the specific Articles, the ability for selected user-base to easily contribute, images or even videos, a lot that this forum board offers but which does not require a user to post a reply to the specific issue...


Hmmm, sorry, I'm just thinking out-loud while sleeeeeeeeepy and after some wine.

Cheers ! !! !
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AidanJT wrote:
Angrychile wrote:
Please, can we stop whining and actually appoint someone to do something :P

Nobody can do anything while the devs sit on their hands, maintain their user exclusionary behaviour, and only climb out of -dev@g.o to handwave away any dissension.


Yeah. Nobody can do anything... except run a wiki.


Chiitoo wrote:
Thinking about it now, what could the wikki provide, other than manuals?


Wiki's provide a more structured layout than forums. With forums, you have to rely on either the forum search facilities or people willing to repost stuff over and over. The former is pretty much always uselessly crap (and even worse with the Gentoo Forums, last I checked they don't let Google index them) and the latter only works for common issues.

Wiki's also allow the content to be edited long after the original poster has gone. If you post a tutorial or instructions on the forums and there's an error in it or it becomes outdated, you have to rely on people reading the whole thread to find that out and correct it. Because anyone can correct a wiki, this isn't an issue.
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desultory
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AllenJB wrote:
With forums, you have to rely on either the forum search facilities or people willing to repost stuff over and over. The former is pretty much always uselessly crap (and even worse with the Gentoo Forums, last I checked they don't let Google index them) and the latter only works for common issues.
Just so you know.
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AllenJB wrote:
AidanJT wrote:
Angrychile wrote:
Please, can we stop whining and actually appoint someone to do something :P

Nobody can do anything while the devs sit on their hands, maintain their user exclusionary behaviour, and only climb out of -dev@g.o to handwave away any dissension.


Yeah. Nobody can do anything... except run a wiki.


Chiitoo wrote:
Thinking about it now, what could the wikki provide, other than manuals?


Wiki's provide a more structured layout than forums. With forums, you have to rely on either the forum search facilities or people willing to repost stuff over and over. The former is pretty much always uselessly crap (and even worse with the Gentoo Forums, last I checked they don't let Google index them) and the latter only works for common issues.

Wiki's also allow the content to be edited long after the original poster has gone. If you post a tutorial or instructions on the forums and there's an error in it or it becomes outdated, you have to rely on people reading the whole thread to find that out and correct it. Because anyone can correct a wiki, this isn't an issue.

Can't help to think that you did not really read my post fully since you kind of said what I said, I think?

Except for the Google thing, and I have read about that, but yeah, even though we do not have the Google search, it does seem to find things in our forum quite well. I'm not even going to link to the post that leads to the google-site that tells the amount Google funds for their services. Oh no, it's not worth it. ~whispering: I mean mentioning the site is not worth it, imagine what would happen if we get to...~
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