Re: wiki [Was Re: The trick to build PySablot and an updated SuSE-GNUe-HOWTO]

[Jason Cater]

Touché. 

-- Jason

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 22:39:58 +0100
Peter Sullivan <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 12:08:03PM -0700, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> > On Sat, 2002-10-19 at 10:07, Jason Cater wrote:
> > > I know that some don't like the idea of a GNUe wiki, but I'd like us
> > > to consider it again. Someone mentioned they didn't like the idea of
> > > doing docs in wiki at the expense of some traditional format. 
> [...]
> > Maybe our web site just needs an easier
> > way to upload 'user contributed' documentation?
> 
> /me waits for someone to suggest phpNuke/postnuke as a possible
> solution... I like the concepts behind wiki, and I think it would fit
> well with both what we are now and what we want to become as a GNUe
> community. My concern would be that we already have multiple channels of
> communication on this project, and I'm not sure that adding yet another
> one will help. We already have:
> 
> 1. Readmes etc. in CVS
> 2. Tech Notes in CVS
> 3. Formal Documentation in CVS (docbook, lyx, html etc.)
> 4. The 3 current mailing lists, not all of which everyone gets
> 5. The historic mailing lists (are these still publically accesible
> anywhere?) 6. The website (improved, but still needs much work)
> 7. The IRC logs (which could really do with better indexing than "grep")
> 8. DCL for bug tracking (a bit more specialised, I know, but still 
>    a comms channel) 
> 9. Kernel Cousins (summary of 4. and 7.)  
> 
> The net effect of all of these is that not only newcomers, but also the 
> core people, can find it difficult to keep in touch with everything that
> 
> is going on (It's both flattering to me but also slightly worrying how 
> even the core developers say they like Kernel Cousins as it's the only 
> way to keep up). And this is with the project at a point (hopefully)
> just *before* it starts to take off exponentially... This probably links
> to Jason's point in another thread about over-management.
> 
> So, I would support a wiki, and even be prepared to help set it up and 
> "seed" it, provided that we used it to *replace* some of the above 
> channels instead of just letting it become number 10 on the list. It 
> could replace 1, 2, 5, much of 6, maybe 8 (although I suspect the 
> "eating own dogfood" argument applies here), and become a definitive 
> pointer/indexing mechanism for 3, 7 and 9. 
> 
> I recognise that this is almost the complete opposite of what other 
> people in this thread see a wiki or wiki-style forum for. I also 
> recognise that, by writing this e-mail rather than doing some more 
> work on the website this evening as intended, I am contributing to 
> the over-management that Jason refers to...
> 
> -- 
> Peter Sullivan <address@hidden>
> 
> 
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