Mailing List Archive

AllenJB wrote:
> While I would be pleased to see a wiki hosted on official resources as
> Gentoo probably have far more resources at their disposal than any user
> run site could hope to acquire.

Hi Allen,
that's great to hear, but it's actually a bit different from what Josh
said earlier in a related thread [1]. I take it that you're actually
open to being hosted by the gentoo infra, am I correct here? That'd be
great to hear.

> It's been suggested that the wiki be moderated by forum mods.

I think that this idea got abandoned. We don't want to maintain the wiki
pages.

[snipped a bit about running wiki and proper workflows]

> While a true wiki is open to editing by all, and you may opt to protect
> certain articles (because you deem them to be "official" or whatever),
> you will still need admins who will handle spam, page deletions and user
> restrictions. You will obviously want admins for each language you
> support. Who will they be and what will the recruitment process be? Will
> they get any training?

Well, in my opinion, the wiki is supposed to be self-maintained (as in
"users themselves are expected to fix spam/vandalism/whatever"). Isn't
that a concept that works on large wikis pretty well? Do you have
reasons to believe that it won't work for a Gentoo one?

> If you intend to create a wiki to replace gentoo-wiki.com, how will you
> handle this? If the wikis end up running side-by-side, will you have
> policies on copying from gentoo-wiki.com? (You should probably have
> policies on copying from other wikis anyway)

This reminds me of an "issue" with the license of your wiki. While you
are of course free to choose any license you want for your projects,
have you considered switching to CC-BY-SA instead of CC-BY-NC-SA? That
is a license that is: a) used by all of the Gentoo documentation, b)
compatible with the recent release of GFDL. The current license, while
being a bit more protective about user's rights, prevents any contents
from our documentation or, for example, the Wikipedia, to be used in
your wiki and vice versa.

And there's also one last point that I believe should be raised here.
The gentoo-wiki.com, as it is now, currently violates some of the bits
of our name-logo-usage document [2]. I believe this is not done on
purpose, but rather as an error. Could you please have a look at the
document and fix the wiki templates, so that it is compliant with our
document?

Please don't take me wrong here, I've personally found many of the
resources available at your wiki really valuable (with some of the
others being, well, broken). I was sad to see gentoo-wiki going down
(and can realize your frustration when you can't reach your boxes
anymore), but even more disappointed when users came to us, the Gentoo
developers, and expressed that they weren't aware that none of the
gentoo-*.com projects are *not* affiliated with Gentoo at all.

Cheers,
-jkt

[1]
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-doc/msg_9ffb2b35be3b5c6724f290dccd0897bf.xml
[2] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/name-logo.xml


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

On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 18:30 +0100, Xavier Neys wrote:
> Thomas Raschbacher (Gentoo) wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 11:41 +0100, Goran Mekić wrote:
> >>> So, I'd like to hear what you think. Should we have a wiki? Why or why
> >> If you try to simplify things (suppose there's no spam, no obuse),
> >> wiki could be a great pool of potetial official documentation. As I
> >> see it, this is the greates value of wiki. "Just" pick good articles,
> >> refine them and move them to official docs. As a person who never
> >> administrated wiki, I have no clue how to secure it.
> >
> > How practical/possible is it to add some kind of 'verified by a
> > developer / moderator' flag / tag which cannot be changed by normal
> > users and only applies to a specific version of the page?
>
> Simply impossible.
> Sure you can have some 'officially sanctioned' tag on articles, but how do you
> garantee it keeps this status.
> Anytime anything changes in the article (easy to detect) or anywhere else in
> GentooLand and the content can become very wrong.
>
> Let users "vote" on articles, comment on them, provide feedback, and obviously
> edit content... Let the wiki live its wiki life.
>
> Wkr,

Well basically you'd have to lock the pages which are really important
or just really well written with a link to another page aobut discussing
it (someone else mentioned that in another mail on this thread)

Also i have to point out that the 'vote' approach would have the same
problems if it just votes on the article nto a specific revision of
it .. ;)

Jan Kundrát wrote:
> AllenJB wrote:
>> While I would be pleased to see a wiki hosted on official resources as
>> Gentoo probably have far more resources at their disposal than any
>> user run site could hope to acquire.
>
> Hi Allen,
> that's great to hear, but it's actually a bit different from what Josh
> said earlier in a related thread [1]. I take it that you're actually
> open to being hosted by the gentoo infra, am I correct here? That'd be
> great to hear.

I'm only an admin. Thrasher, who actually runs the site, would be the
one to make such a decision.

>
>> It's been suggested that the wiki be moderated by forum mods.
>
> I think that this idea got abandoned. We don't want to maintain the wiki
> pages.
>
> [snipped a bit about running wiki and proper workflows]
>
>> While a true wiki is open to editing by all, and you may opt to
>> protect certain articles (because you deem them to be "official" or
>> whatever), you will still need admins who will handle spam, page
>> deletions and user restrictions. You will obviously want admins for
>> each language you support. Who will they be and what will the
>> recruitment process be? Will they get any training?
>
> Well, in my opinion, the wiki is supposed to be self-maintained (as in
> "users themselves are expected to fix spam/vandalism/whatever"). Isn't
> that a concept that works on large wikis pretty well? Do you have
> reasons to believe that it won't work for a Gentoo one?

Wiki's are not self maintaining. I don't believe you've ever been
involved with one to any extent if you believe this. Any unmaintained
wiki will become a useless mass of spam and bad articles.

While most of the maintainence work is doable by registered users, there
are some tasks which registered users can't (and you wouldn't want them
to be able to) do, such as deleting articles and banning users. If you
don't ban spammers and their IPs, they will just keep coming back and
you'll have a snowball effect on your hands. While users can remove all
content from any article, they can't actually delete articles (or
undelete them). You'll want to do this to keep the wiki clean, otherwise
you'll end up with lots of empty pages.

While users can do other chores such as moving pages to comply with
naming conventions and checking and tagging articles that need cleaning
up (and then actually cleaning them up), my opinion is that you will
want a team of dedicated volunteers to do this. Give them a title like
"Wiki maintainer" or something similar. While ideally users would do
these tasks without such structure, I believe giving them titles (even
if they don't get any powers over regular users) does help.


>
>> If you intend to create a wiki to replace gentoo-wiki.com, how will
>> you handle this? If the wikis end up running side-by-side, will you
>> have policies on copying from gentoo-wiki.com? (You should probably
>> have policies on copying from other wikis anyway)
>
> This reminds me of an "issue" with the license of your wiki. While you
> are of course free to choose any license you want for your projects,
> have you considered switching to CC-BY-SA instead of CC-BY-NC-SA? That
> is a license that is: a) used by all of the Gentoo documentation, b)
> compatible with the recent release of GFDL. The current license, while
> being a bit more protective about user's rights, prevents any contents
> from our documentation or, for example, the Wikipedia, to be used in
> your wiki and vice versa.
>
> And there's also one last point that I believe should be raised here.
> The gentoo-wiki.com, as it is now, currently violates some of the bits
> of our name-logo-usage document [2]. I believe this is not done on
> purpose, but rather as an error. Could you please have a look at the
> document and fix the wiki templates, so that it is compliant with our
> document?

We'll check the issues you've raised above and make any changes we
believe necessary. Thanks for raising this.

>
> Please don't take me wrong here, I've personally found many of the
> resources available at your wiki really valuable (with some of the
> others being, well, broken). I was sad to see gentoo-wiki going down
> (and can realize your frustration when you can't reach your boxes
> anymore), but even more disappointed when users came to us, the Gentoo
> developers, and expressed that they weren't aware that none of the
> gentoo-*.com projects are *not* affiliated with Gentoo at all.

To my knowledge the wiki has always made best efforts to inform users
that the site is official and has never claimed to be official in any
capacity. It is and never has been the intention to mislead anyone in
this regard.

AllenJB

>
> Cheers,
> -jkt
>
> [1]
> http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-doc/msg_9ffb2b35be3b5c6724f290dccd0897bf.xml
>
> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/name-logo.xml
>
>

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 03:22:18PM -0800, Josh Saddler wrote:

> We're going to see what we already have now: a conflict between the wiki
> and the "official" documentation.

I'm pretty sure users would see the wiki as an extra source of
documentation, not a "conflicting with" official documentation. Wikis
are (in essence and in users mind at least) known to be a *users*
product. This implies it could be sometimes not perfect or partially
wrong/obsolete.

> "Well, the wiki says this, but the official docs say this."
> "Which do I follow?"
> "Well, the official docs are wrong/out-of-date, just do the wiki, even
> though it's harder to follow." Etc.
>
> This is why I feel having a wiki really *is* relevant to the GDP.

Of course, such confilts could happen. IMHO it's not a valuable reason
to have a wiki checked by the GDP anymore (taking out licensing or alike
considarations).

Conflicts should obiously be a start up to improvements.

> Also, if we do have a wiki, why shouldn't the *GDP* embrace it in some
> way?

Why the GDP couldn't embrace a really opened wiki ? The GDP members have
fortunately all the requirements to become contributors/admins.

> There may be some merit in attempting to merge
> these disparate documentation bases. Maybe it could be a way to increase
> participation from the community.

I think that an irrelevant to the GDP wiki *is* a way to increase
participation from the community.

--
Nicolas Sebrecht

>
> I'm pretty sure users would see the wiki as an extra source of
> documentation, not a "conflicting with" official documentation. Wikis
> are (in essence and in users mind at least) known to be a *users*
> product. This implies it could be sometimes not perfect or partially
> wrong/obsolete.
>
I agree,
the goal of wiki is not the technical quality (even if the quality
also is often very good), but the free expression of users.
it's a service for the community, not a launch window of the distribution.

the only thing developers should do in the wiki is to have sometimes a
look to some principal articles, but they have not to carry the
responsiblity of them. History carries this resposibility for them.

my few cent (and sorry for my english).

Peter Volkov wrote:
> В Втр, 11/11/2008 в 17:08 +0000, Duncan пишет:
>> Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> posted 491988F5.9010206@gentoo.org,
>> excerpted below, on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:30:29 +0100:
>>> Josh Saddler wrote:
>>>> Nope. The gentoo-wiki.com owner has already stated on the forums that
>>>> he doesn't see a need for it to be hosted on our infrastructure.
>>> Did he do that after the recent debacle? I think he would be more
>>> interested now. (Yes, people can change their mind...)
>> I'm wondering on that too. Events sometimes have a way of changing
>> someone's mind, and if that could happen, I'd think it would have at this.
>
> This was after. I've tried to contact him too and afaik there was an
> official proposal at the same time with similar results.

And why was that not made public? This is the first I hear about that.

--
Ben de Groot
Gentoo Linux developer (lxde, media, desktop-misc)
Gentoo Linux Release Engineering PR liaison
__________________________________________________

yngwin@gentoo.org
http://ben.liveforge.org/
irc://chat.freenode.net/#gentoo-media
irc://irc.oftc.net/#lxde
__________________________________________________

On Wed, 2008-11-12 at 16:14 +0100, Ben de Groot wrote:

> Peter Volkov wrote:
> > ÷ ÷ÔÒ, 11/11/2008 × 17:08 +0000, Duncan ÐÉÛÅÔ:
> >> Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> posted 491988F5.9010206@gentoo.org,
> >> excerpted below, on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:30:29 +0100:
> >>> Josh Saddler wrote:
> >>>> Nope. The gentoo-wiki.com owner has already stated on the forums that
> >>>> he doesn't see a need for it to be hosted on our infrastructure.
> >>> Did he do that after the recent debacle? I think he would be more
> >>> interested now. (Yes, people can change their mind...)
> >> I'm wondering on that too. Events sometimes have a way of changing
> >> someone's mind, and if that could happen, I'd think it would have at this.
> >
> > This was after. I've tried to contact him too and afaik there was an
> > official proposal at the same time with similar results.
>
> And why was that not made public? This is the first I hear about that.
>


I've spoken to the infra team about hosting. We're not up for jumping
through loops and hoops just to get the project hosted. Mike (thrasher7)
agree's on keeping the wiki 'a community' project. By hosting with the
infra team, that just means we have to follow their guidelines. ie. code
audits, reporting to other devs, lack of physical access to machines as
well as root access, etc.

The gentoo-portage code would be a nice addition as an official site.
The current packages.gentoo.org site, as we can all agree; is nothing
compared to g-p.com.


Jeremy McSpadden
jeremy@gentoo-wiki.com
Gentoo-Wiki/Portage
Systems Administrator

Jeremy McSpadden wrote:
> I've spoken to the infra team about hosting. We're not up for jumping
> through loops and hoops just to get the project hosted. Mike (thrasher7)
> agree's on keeping the wiki 'a community' project. By hosting with the
> infra team, that just means we have to follow their guidelines. ie. code
> audits, reporting to other devs, lack of physical access to machines as
> well as root access, etc.

Could we get this posted on gentoo-wiki.com as an article of some kind?
I for one wasn't aware of *any* communication going between us (Gentoo)
and you (gentoo-wiki/portage).

I think that putting this disclaimer to both portals would be really
great and prevent much confusion and useless emails.

> The gentoo-portage code would be a nice addition as an official site.
> The current packages.gentoo.org site, as we can all agree; is nothing
> compared to g-p.com.

Please talk to our infrastructure team, and please remove me from your
list of "all" :).

Cheers,
-jkt

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

Josh Saddler wrote:
> Hey again. So there's some discussion (again) on starting up an official
> Gentoo wiki. Official meaning it's hosted on our infrastructure; e.g.
> wiki.gentoo.org. This time the discussion is coming from our fellow
> developers and infra overlords.
>

Our fellow developers or infra overlords have seen any problem in how do
we work and the status of the current documentation? This list is open
to anyone and I haven't read any mail saying so.

>
> However, it's been quite awhile since the last time we (the GDP) talked
> it over. Given our current issues of manpower and time (see
> archives.gentoo.org for commit totals), perhaps a wiki could solve some
> issues?

Let's face what problems we have in GDP and find a way to solve them.
The solution should not bring new problems or make our most powerful
features worst.

> The classic problems are:
> 1) Who has access
> 2) Who reports faulty articles
> 3) Who fixes them
> 4) Who verifies the article is correct
> 5) ???
> 6) Profit

These problems appear when you are going against wiki principles, may be
are you trying to use a wiki for something which was not designed to?

> So, I'd like to hear what you think. Should we have a wiki? Why or why
> not?

What will be the propose of the wiki? More documentation? Written by
anyone and hosted in gentoo.org? Without being sure about its quality
first? If so, you have my "no, please".

> There's no question that having a properly-administered wiki can be a
> powerful asset. Look at Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, the Xfce wiki, etc. What
> about Gentoo?

Maybe I'm too ignorant but every time a look to Ubuntu or Debian wiki I
wasn't able to be sure about the 'official','review','updated' state of
the documentation.

Summarizing:

- If you think we have problems in GDP, let's talk about them.
- Seems to me that people is thinking of using a wiki not as a result
of a process to solve a problem.
- I prefer quality over quantity. Every step done shouldn't touch the
Gentoo Documentation quality.
- If someone is thinking of us involved in the wiki review or admin
process and all its fun, please ask first.
- If someone is thinking of replacing docs with a wiki, I really
dislike the idea.

Thanks.

--
Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
Gentoo/Alpha Gentoo/Doc

В Срд, 12/11/2008 в 16:14 +0100, Ben de Groot пишет:
> Peter Volkov wrote:
> > В Втр, 11/11/2008 в 17:08 +0000, Duncan пишет:
> >> Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> posted 491988F5.9010206@gentoo.org,
> >> excerpted below, on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:30:29 +0100:
> >>> Josh Saddler wrote:
> >>>> Nope. The gentoo-wiki.com owner has already stated on the forums that
> >>>> he doesn't see a need for it to be hosted on our infrastructure.
> >>> Did he do that after the recent debacle? I think he would be more
> >>> interested now. (Yes, people can change their mind...)
> >> I'm wondering on that too. Events sometimes have a way of changing
> >> someone's mind, and if that could happen, I'd think it would have at this.
> >
> > This was after. I've tried to contact him too and afaik there was an
> > official proposal at the same time with similar results.
>
> And why was that not made public? This is the first I hear about that.

Until there existed context, like this discussion, I don't see where I
could fit this information. And I didn't want to start discussion about
wiki by myself. But since it's started see the facts.

--
Peter.

Jose Luis Rivero wrote:

>> So, I'd like to hear what you think. Should we have a wiki? Why or why
>> not?

NO !!!

> What will be the propose of the wiki? More documentation? Written by
> anyone and hosted in gentoo.org? Without being sure about its quality
> first? If so, you have my "no, please".

>> There's no question that having a properly-administered wiki can be a
>> powerful asset. Look at Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, the Xfce wiki, etc. What
>> about Gentoo?

> Maybe I'm too ignorant but every time a look to Ubuntu or Debian wiki I
> wasn't able to be sure about the 'official','review','updated' state of
> the documentation.

> Summarizing:
> - If you think we have problems in GDP, let's talk about them.
> - Seems to me that people is thinking of using a wiki not as a result
> of a process to solve a problem.
> - I prefer quality over quantity. Every step done shouldn't touch the
> Gentoo Documentation quality.
> - If someone is thinking of us involved in the wiki review or admin
> process and all its fun, please ask first.
> - If someone is thinking of replacing docs with a wiki, I really
> dislike the idea.

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been unplugged for a while.....


After reading the entire thread, a rather simple solution seems
obvious. The GDP or Infra or whatever official group should stay
out of the the wiki business, for many aforementioned reasons.


However, if what ever the new wiki(s) pop up for the ashes of any
previous efforts, it seem like a natural place for 'official gentoo
folks' to peruse, parse, filter and/or glean information for good
ideas and (tested) content into one of the existing gentoo
semantics (GDP infra whatever), but leave the morass of a wiki to
the user community at large.

That way folks could first look to the trunk of Gentoo for docs
on a given subject and if nothing there exist, THEN go to any
of these community wikis.


For example, installing a webcam is pretty important and very, very
common among needs for any distro. Yet if you google for webcam,
install and gentoo, you get a variety of 'hash' mostly outdated.


Those talent folks within the official gentoo structure, should
recognize this and build docs somewhere, of high quality, that
walk a gentoo user through how to set up a capture card (ntsc/pal)
or a web cam.

But for every issue that really needs a good doc, there will be
many wikis with a variety of quality, mostly due to the lack of
maintenance over time. Smart folks with lots of current
responsibilities, should stay focused on current goals.


However, as the external gentoo wikis mature, but the others
in the gentoo community, folks can glean good idea to increase
the officially maintained docs.

YMMV,

James

Request for clarification:
So you're proposing that if I write a good article on the wiki, the
Gentoo devs should take that article, XMLify it and put it on the static
site where I can't update it easily?

AllenJB

wireless wrote:
> Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
>
>>> So, I'd like to hear what you think. Should we have a wiki? Why or why
>>> not?
>
> NO !!!
>
>> What will be the propose of the wiki? More documentation? Written by
>> anyone and hosted in gentoo.org? Without being sure about its quality
>> first? If so, you have my "no, please".
>
>>> There's no question that having a properly-administered wiki can be a
>>> powerful asset. Look at Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, the Xfce wiki, etc. What
>>> about Gentoo?
>
>> Maybe I'm too ignorant but every time a look to Ubuntu or Debian wiki I
>> wasn't able to be sure about the 'official','review','updated' state of
>> the documentation.
>
>> Summarizing:
>> - If you think we have problems in GDP, let's talk about them.
>> - Seems to me that people is thinking of using a wiki not as a result
>> of a process to solve a problem.
>> - I prefer quality over quantity. Every step done shouldn't touch the
>> Gentoo Documentation quality.
>> - If someone is thinking of us involved in the wiki review or admin
>> process and all its fun, please ask first.
>> - If someone is thinking of replacing docs with a wiki, I really
>> dislike the idea.
>
> Sorry for the delayed response, I've been unplugged for a while.....
>
>
> After reading the entire thread, a rather simple solution seems
> obvious. The GDP or Infra or whatever official group should stay
> out of the the wiki business, for many aforementioned reasons.
>
>
> However, if what ever the new wiki(s) pop up for the ashes of any
> previous efforts, it seem like a natural place for 'official gentoo
> folks' to peruse, parse, filter and/or glean information for good
> ideas and (tested) content into one of the existing gentoo
> semantics (GDP infra whatever), but leave the morass of a wiki to
> the user community at large.
>
> That way folks could first look to the trunk of Gentoo for docs
> on a given subject and if nothing there exist, THEN go to any
> of these community wikis.
>
>
> For example, installing a webcam is pretty important and very, very
> common among needs for any distro. Yet if you google for webcam,
> install and gentoo, you get a variety of 'hash' mostly outdated.
>
>
> Those talent folks within the official gentoo structure, should
> recognize this and build docs somewhere, of high quality, that
> walk a gentoo user through how to set up a capture card (ntsc/pal)
> or a web cam.
>
> But for every issue that really needs a good doc, there will be
> many wikis with a variety of quality, mostly due to the lack of
> maintenance over time. Smart folks with lots of current
> responsibilities, should stay focused on current goals.
>
>
> However, as the external gentoo wikis mature, but the others
> in the gentoo community, folks can glean good idea to increase
> the officially maintained docs.
>
> YMMV,
>
> James
>

AllenJB wrote:
> Request for clarification:
> So you're proposing that if I write a good article on the wiki, the
> Gentoo devs should take that article, XMLify it and put it on the static
> site where I can't update it easily?

Actually, I'm not sure that guy had anything to say, really. But yeah,
you're right; basically, it's a bad idea. If you write the article, best
to keep it someplace where you know it'll easily receive TLC.

Josh Saddler wrote:
> AllenJB wrote:
>> Request for clarification:
>> So you're proposing that if I write a good article on the wiki, the
>> Gentoo devs should take that article, XMLify it and put it on the static
>> site where I can't update it easily?

Your docs on your wiki, should follow whatever semantic you like.
Nobody is talking about hi-jacking your (wiki) docs. I'm talking about
maybe one out of fifty docs that one typically finds on a wiki, could
be motivation (and yes some ideas) on creating a similar doc that
is officially bless and maintained, to a much higher standard and
address things such that they can influence some of the existing
official docs.

> Actually, I'm not sure that guy had anything to say, really. But yeah,
> you're right; basically, it's a bad idea. If you write the article, best
> to keep it someplace where you know it'll easily receive TLC.


Um, I think your both confused what I'm trying to say. I'll restate
it, hopefully a little bit more clearly.

Running a wiki, which usually has many folks actively involved, where
the emphasis is on quantity of docs, not rigid uniformity, and where
the particular selection of docs will usually be vastly larger than
any official distro docs, you have completely different semantics, so
they cannot be merged, without great pain, compromise and huge amounts
of time.


Let the wiki, (or any number of wikis) exist unto themselves. However,
if a really good topic comes up, then those officially under much
tighter constraints, such as GDP or infra, should consider maintaining
a similar doc, that is held to much tighter (semantics) controls.


Let's face it. We all re-hash much of the same content on different
linux distros, or even the same linux distro, so *I* do not see any
big deal with this concept. Google for something and often you find
multiple wikis that address a given subject with different docs, but
with much that is common. Occasionally one will see a reference to
that original doc that inspired the derivative. Often the wiki docs
are old and not maintained, for a variety of reason. Just google for
how to install a camera on a linux machine for a myriad of ideas. It
sure would be nice to have an officially maintain basic video setup on
gentoo, either using capture cards or a cheap webcam, as a baseline
for folks to get something working. (using my previous example). It
would not have to be encompassing but it should be maintained to GDP
or such standards. Then let the wiki document, via dozens of different
documents, many of the finer, fast moving aspects of cameras and
video. I.E. *Complimentary documents* not competing documents....



Two docs that address the same subject, one on a wiki, the other part
of the official gentoo docs is good for users. The official docs will
never be as numerous as other docs folks use to solve a problem or at
least get some ideas how to install or fix something. However what is
part of the official docs should be rigorously maintained, and held to
a much higher standard, than the typical wiki, imho.


There is a reason we have many motorcycles and many vehicles with 4
wheels. However, how often do you see a three-wheeled vehicle? Sure
they exist, but, they are not common and they are very easily wrecked.
Remember the early ones for recreational vehicles in the 1980s? They
have been baned here in the US, because they were prone to
catastrophic failure. Ditto for merging a wiki and official distro docs.



ymmv,
James

wireless wrote:
> Josh Saddler wrote:
>> AllenJB wrote:
>>> Request for clarification:
>>> So you're proposing that if I write a good article on the wiki, the
>>> Gentoo devs should take that article, XMLify it and put it on the static
>>> site where I can't update it easily?
>
> Your docs on your wiki, should follow whatever semantic you like. Nobody
> is talking about hi-jacking your (wiki) docs. I'm talking about
> maybe one out of fifty docs that one typically finds on a wiki, could
> be motivation (and yes some ideas) on creating a similar doc that
> is officially bless and maintained, to a much higher standard and
> address things such that they can influence some of the existing
> official docs.

If there's already a high quality document on the wiki, why is there a
need to duplicate efforts? Surely it's the areas NOT already covered by
high quality documentation that should be concentrated on.

>
>> Actually, I'm not sure that guy had anything to say, really. But yeah,
>> you're right; basically, it's a bad idea. If you write the article, best
>> to keep it someplace where you know it'll easily receive TLC.
>
>
> Um, I think your both confused what I'm trying to say. I'll restate it,
> hopefully a little bit more clearly.
>
> Running a wiki, which usually has many folks actively involved, where
> the emphasis is on quantity of docs, not rigid uniformity, and where the
> particular selection of docs will usually be vastly larger than any
> official distro docs, you have completely different semantics, so they
> cannot be merged, without great pain, compromise and huge amounts
> of time.
>
>
> Let the wiki, (or any number of wikis) exist unto themselves. However,
> if a really good topic comes up, then those officially under much
> tighter constraints, such as GDP or infra, should consider maintaining
> a similar doc, that is held to much tighter (semantics) controls.

Again, you're suggesting duplication of efforts. What point would this
have? What problem would it fix?

> Let's face it. We all re-hash much of the same content on different
> linux distros, or even the same linux distro, so *I* do not see any big
> deal with this concept. Google for something and often you find multiple
> wikis that address a given subject with different docs, but with much
> that is common. Occasionally one will see a reference to that original
> doc that inspired the derivative. Often the wiki docs are old and not
> maintained, for a variety of reason.

While this was true of the old wiki, it is certainly not true of the
documents on the new Gentoo Wiki - they are being checked for accuracy
and errors by a team of volunteers as they are being entered. We will be
doing our best to keep it this way.

We're also already considering methods of indicating documents which we
believe to be particularly good or particularly bad.

> Just google for how to install a
> camera on a linux machine for a myriad of ideas. It sure would be nice
> to have an officially maintain basic video setup on gentoo, either using
> capture cards or a cheap webcam, as a baseline
> for folks to get something working. (using my previous example). It
> would not have to be encompassing but it should be maintained to GDP
> or such standards. Then let the wiki document, via dozens of different
> documents, many of the finer, fast moving aspects of cameras and video.
> I.E. *Complimentary documents* not competing documents....

Why can't, where they exist, the wiki document both? You're not going to
be able to stop people documenting certain things on the wiki (and as an
admin of the wiki, I don't believe you'd want to).

>
> Two docs that address the same subject, one on a wiki, the other part of
> the official gentoo docs is good for users.
How is it good for users? Now they have to judge which document to follow.

> The official docs will never
> be as numerous as other docs folks use to solve a problem or at
> least get some ideas how to install or fix something. However what is
> part of the official docs should be rigorously maintained, and held to a
> much higher standard, than the typical wiki, imho.

> There is a reason we have many motorcycles and many vehicles with 4
> wheels. However, how often do you see a three-wheeled vehicle? Sure they
> exist, but, they are not common and they are very easily wrecked.
> Remember the early ones for recreational vehicles in the 1980s? They
> have been baned here in the US, because they were prone to catastrophic
> failure. Ditto for merging a wiki and official distro docs.

I don't see what this analogy has to do with this discussion at all. It
seems to be totally unrelated to me.

>
> ymmv,
> James
>

In my opinion, the Gentoo Documentation Project is there to maintain
documentation on issues specifically related to Gentoo and issues which
you'd expect to find official documents on. Things like upgrading to
baselayout 2 or upgrading to a newer profile.

Meanwhile the wiki is there to basically document everything else. How
to install and configure software or hardware (perhaps in a specific way).

There will always be some crossover, but that's the main "areas of
responsibility" that I see each covering.

AllenJB