[openbeos] Re: The Wiki
- From: "Waldemar Kornewald" <wkornew@xxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:01:36 +0200
Hi Michael,
On 9/29/06, Michael Phipps <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's also important to remember that development means something different
to ... non-developers. Many people will think of that as sort of like news
- what are the latest developments. Especially non-technical people.
Right.
I am completely against the wiki even existing, to be honest. Drupal gives
logged in users the ability to submit content. What extra benefit does wiki
give, except a door for spammers and ill mannered people? We have a good
balance - the ability for the community to contribute and the ability for
us to control what goes on the site, and all without wiki. I vote to drop
it altogether.
An ideal CMS would be flexible enough to replace the wiki, but Drupal
has stupid limitations. For example, after content has been published
changes don't go into moderation (they are either immediately
published or the whole document is unpublished). Also, Drupal's
revision system doesn't have a diff viewer. There are hacky
plugins+patches, but nothing official, AFAIK.
OTOH, I really don't see a lot of important content on our wiki, either:
* hardware compatibility list
* open-source software list
* GE suggestions (which later get moved to the official site)
* Haiku User Book
* future: tips and hacks (Sikosis suggested setting up a HaikuTips server)
Do we need the wiki, at all? GE articles don't really need a wiki for
moderation because they are discussed via mail. Newsletter articles
worked without a "drafts" area, too. We will only need an extra
wiki/website for writing the Haiku User Book.
-----------------
Let's talk about the Haiku User Book:
The final documentation for each release must not be editable by
everyone (risking SPAM and incorrectness => unprofessional).
How do we maintain documentation for multiple Haiku releases? I don't
think that MediaWiki is good enough. A file-based wiki (e.g.:
DokuWiki) might work better because you can create a new branch by
simply duplicating a folder (namespace) for every Haiku release. That
way we could have restricted namespaces for final documentation
(nobody can edit) and less rescrictive sections for in-progress
documentation (everyone can contribute).
It's probably important to have an export function for HTML and maybe
PDF, so we can ship the documentation with Haiku.
Maybe TWiki is flexible enough. It could additionally be used as a
knowledge base (IOW, HaikuTips), but I'm sure there are better tools
for this.
So, what should we use? Do we need the wiki for the Haiku User Book?
Should we use a more capable wiki system? Or something completely
different?
But the reason for the mega-warnings was that the GE stuff went into the
wiki and it needed to be made abundantly clear to anyone visiting that they
were *NOT* looking at a product roadmap but instead a list of brainstormed
ideas.
For those who wondered:
GE = "Glass Elevator" (the brainstorming subproject).
Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald
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