[dokuwiki] plugins, and their 'activity' / 'maintenance'

  • From: "Jay Dickon Glanville" <dickon.glanville@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 10:27:11 -0500

Salutations,

I'm beginning to get a little worried.

I just found out that the second plugin that I wanted to add to my
DokuWiki installation is no longer being actively maintained.  This
makes my success-with-plugins statistics 0 out of 2.

The first plugin I wanted to install was the GraphVis plugin
(http://wiki.ioslo.net/dokuwiki/graphviz).  Unfortunately, according
to the website, "this is slightly broken as of 2005-06-22".  Well, I
guess I'm not going to use this one.

The current plugin I wanted to install is considered one of the most
popular plugs, according to the wiki:plugins page
(http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki%3Aplugins).  It's the gcalendar
plugin.  However, according to the plugin's page
(http://wiki.splitbrain.org/plugin:gcalendar), this plugin's
development / maintenance has been discontinued.

I don't want to install a plugin that isn't actively being maintained.
I have worries about introducing functionality to the users that
might fail or have to be removed at the next upgrade.  (Give child
candy, take it away, give child candy, take it away, watch child cry.)
Call me cautious.

When I go to the wiki:plugins page, it looks like a cornucopia of
functionality -- makes me salivate like a geek with a new computer
(self reference here, no insult intended ;-) ).  However, if two of
the plugins I wanted are either unusable or I should be cautious
about, how many of the rest of the plugins can I trust?

So here's my question to the rest of the community: is there any way
that we could update the plugins page so that the concept of
'activity' is reflected for each plugin?  I realize it's very unlikely
to get a freshmeat.net type of statistics, but being able to tell
users that a plugin is ... alive ... would be useful.

I can see that similar types of information has been attempted on this
page.  For example, the column 'Compatible DokuWiki Versions' tells
people if the plugin can be used with DokuWiki version X, but this
data is rather poorly maintained.  Only one third (70 out of 205
plugins) actually state their compatibility.

There.  I've got that off my chest.  I'll now get down off my little
soapbox and be a quite and good little boy.  (pats himself
patronizingly on the head)   ;-)

JDG

--
Jay Dickon Glanville
--
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