http://gentoo-{wiki,portage}.com doesnt work for me?

Message

krigav · Post by **krigav** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:06 pm

I've just needed some information about my new ati graphic board, so I headed to the gentoo wiki. But I can't reach it. Is there any problem with the gentoo wiki?!?

Mod Edit: changed the title to include gentoo-portage.com - tomk

anello · Post by **anello** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:11 pm

There is an update available for mediawiki, so its probably getting an update right now

beatryder · Post by **beatryder** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:34 pm

anello wrote:There is an update available for mediawiki, so its probably getting an update right now

That does not explain why gentoo-portage is also down, which is hosted on the same server. Those two sites are down more than.....

krigav · Post by **krigav** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:50 pm

beatryder wrote:
anello wrote:There is an update available for mediawiki, so its probably getting an update right now

That does not explain why gentoo-portage is also down, which is hosted on the same server. Those two sites are down more than.....

You're right! I can't reach gentoo-portage's web server, too. Though I can ping the server:

r@lhost root # ping -c3 gentoo-portage.com
PING gentoo-portage.com (72.10.70.138) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=135 ms
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=145 ms
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=139 ms

--- gentoo-portage.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 135.035/140.037/145.416/4.246 ms

r@lhost root # ping -c3 gentoo-wiki.org
PING gentoo-wiki.org (72.10.70.138) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=155 ms
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=136 ms
64 bytes from ip-72-10-70-138.static.skiplink.net (72.10.70.138): icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=147 ms

--- gentoo-wiki.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 136.657/146.419/155.326/7.658 ms

Conan · Post by **Conan** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:54 pm

Neither of these sites are official gentoo sites. The answer you seek cannot be found here.

krigav · Post by **krigav** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:12 pm

Conan wrote:Neither of these sites are official gentoo sites. The answer you seek cannot be found here.

I know. But I think that the wiki should really be an offical part of gentoo.

beatryder · Post by **beatryder** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:16 pm

krigav wrote:
Conan wrote:Neither of these sites are official gentoo sites. The answer you seek cannot be found here.
I know. But I think that the wiki should really be an offical part of gentoo.

I agree! Since it used so widely and referenced by people so much.

omp · Post by **omp** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 12:49 am

From what I have seen, downtime is not uncommon for gentoo-wiki.com.

Conan · Post by **Conan** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:04 am

Wiki's should never be official documentation.

gentoo-wiki.com has more bad suggestions and out of date information than it has correct information. It's not a good idea to reference much of anything from there.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:07 am

There's nothing wrong with having wiki's as official documentation. As long as you don't do something silly like making it anonymously editable, wiki's can quickly turn into a powerful resource. Plus it lets the community feel like they're involved in something useful.

AllenJB · Post by **AllenJB** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:55 am

krigav wrote:
Conan wrote:Neither of these sites are official gentoo sites. The answer you seek cannot be found here.
I know. But I think that the wiki should really be an offical part of gentoo.

Given the quality of many of the articles on gentoo-wiki (and I should know because I've been spending time I should've been spending on assignments tidying them up), I totally disagree with this.

Part of the problem is that most of the HOWTO's seem to be written by people doing something for the first time, which usually means they don't have a particularly good amount of knowledge on the subject and can lead to mistakes.

Because of their very nature, it's extremely hard to use wiki's as any sort of official documentation because of the fact that anyone at any time can edit them and put something silly in there (and I'm not necessarily talking about obviously stupid stuff like telling someone to "rm -rf /").

BTW the site is back up now.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:13 am

It's not hard to revert an edit though.

96140 · Post by **96140** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:15 am

AllenJB wrote:[. . .]

Indeed. You won't see the wiki become official Gentoo documentation because there is no quality control.

AidanJT wrote:As long as you don't do something silly like making it anonymously editable, wiki's can quickly turn into a powerful resource. Plus it lets the community feel like they're involved in something useful.

These two things are mutually exclusive. Someone in the community wants to contribute, but it can't be done anonymously? Then you have to go through the proper contribution procedures. This takes time; only a select few have commit access to the documentation. And this is where a wiki would get in the way -- there's no point in a restricting access to something that's designed to be quickly, anonymously edited by a large number of contributors (like a wiki).

The community feels involved in something useful because they have anonymous access to the documentation. It's the tradeoff you make -- open access, but no quality control, no assurance the information is valid, up to date, or comes from reliable sources. The better way is to limit access to those in the know, who have a proven track record of solid contributions, and who must hold themselves to strict standards when writing. However, to avoid complete information lockout, you set up a system so that the truly motivated community members can share ideas, suggest topics, report code errors, and so on, via something like our Bugzilla. Plus, you must use a much more powerful revision control system than the limited ones found in wikis. And, you make sure that you have a clear license in place for each and every one of your documents. Gentoo docs are CC 2.5-licensed; the wiki hasn't always had a clear license in mind. Fixing this by arbitrarily, anonymously relicensing someone else's content doesn't strike me as a good idea either.

The wiki is sorely lacking. Downtime is just one of its afflictions.

justwantstohelp · Post by **justwantstohelp** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:27 pm

omp wrote:From what I have seen, downtime is not uncommon for gentoo-wiki.com.

Personally, I've never had any problems before, it's been very responsive every time I visited it, except for after that spambot attack, and then just now. I'm not denying any of the other problems associated with the wiki, as nightmorph pointed out, but I don't see downtime as a serious problem.

AllenJB · Post by **AllenJB** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:17 pm

AidanJT wrote:It's not hard to revert an edit though.

Yes, but until the mistake is spotted by someone who knows it's a mistake, then it's likely to be followed by poor clueless newbies who were just following documentation. You can not have these types of errors in official documentation, which is why the wiki will never be official.

Chaosite · Post by **Chaosite** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:46 pm

AllenJB wrote:Yes, but until the mistake is spotted by someone who knows it's a mistake, then it's likely to be followed by poor clueless newbies who were just following documentation. You can not have these types of errors in official documentation, which is why the wiki will never be official.

Even if its not "official documentation", a wiki can be very useful. It is just as "accurate" as the forums.

Conan · Post by **Conan** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:48 am

Not really, its a whole lot easier to read a forum thread then a wiki history.

Dirk.R.Gently · Post by **Dirk.R.Gently** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:45 pm

krigav wrote:
Conan wrote:Neither of these sites are official gentoo sites. The answer you seek cannot be found here.
I know. But I think that the wiki should really be an offical part of gentoo.

It is awesome and extremely helpful. Would be nice to see Gentoo.org assimilate it.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:58 pm

nightmorph wrote:
AllenJB wrote:[. . .]
Indeed. You won't see the wiki become official Gentoo documentation because there is no quality control.
AidanJT wrote:As long as you don't do something silly like making it anonymously editable, wiki's can quickly turn into a powerful resource. Plus it lets the community feel like they're involved in something useful.
These two things are mutually exclusive. Someone in the community wants to contribute, but it can't be done anonymously? Then you have to go through the proper contribution procedures. This takes time; only a select few have commit access to the documentation. And this is where a wiki would get in the way -- there's no point in a restricting access to something that's designed to be quickly, anonymously edited by a large number of contributors (like a wiki).

Not really, I can register with gentoo-wiki without going through a formal vetting procedure and start editing/creating pages with my identity, if I spam or otherwise abuse the service then I'll rightly be banned, it's damage limitation, it's like giving write permissions to authenticated users of an ftp, you'd be criminally negligent giving anonymous users write access to a production ftp and/or http server.

terracotta_shore · Post by **terracotta_shore** » Wed May 02, 2007 10:13 pm

We can debate the pros and cons of the Gentoo wiki until Larry the cow comes home, but the point is it's been down again all of today (2nd May), and this thread was started in January. Anyone know what's going on?

Yes, some of the wiki might be a bit iffy, but there are also some good and useful articles on it.

I hope it comes back.

Edit, 3rd May: Back up again!

bunder · Post by **bunder** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:06 pm

beatryder wrote:
anello wrote:There is an update available for mediawiki, so its probably getting an update right now

That does not explain why gentoo-portage is also down, which is hosted on the same server. Those two sites are down more than.....

gentoo-portage is way better than packages.gentoo.org. i say they should pull a switcheroo.

netboy1977 · Post by **netboy1977** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:10 am

Hi I am wondering why nobody complained about Gentoo Wiki servers being down again for at least 2 days now.

Is it related to the http://packages.gentoo.org site problem or is there another reason behind downtime? This is very annoying to me since I have to setup some new servers and the Wiki's are a very helpful resource for me.

Best,
Dominik

96140 · Post by **96140** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:42 am

BigBrain · Post by **BigBrain** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:49 am

By the way, you can still "reach" the wiki with google: just search for "gentoo-wiki" and the topic you want to read about. Don't use the direct links but the ones to the cached versions

netboy1977 · Post by **netboy1977** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:55 am

BigBrain wrote:By the way, you can still "reach" the wiki with google: just search for "gentoo-wiki" and the topic you want to read about. Don't use the direct links but the ones to the cached versions

Thanks for your reply. I certainly know about the Google cache option - but for how long will it work?

http://gentoo-{wiki,portage}.com doesnt work for me?

http://gentoo-{wiki,portage}.com doesnt work for me?

Gentoo Wiki http://gentoo-wiki.com/ down again