discuss: Re: vlist wildly inaccurate
Subject:
Re: vlist wildly inaccurate
From:
"V. Alex Brennen" ####@####.####
Date:
15 Jul 2004 14:58:53 -0000
Message-Id: <40F69B66.3020004@cryptnet.net>
Paul Jones wrote:
> actually technology allows you tools to work on social problems neither
> are independent. writing say, solves several at its invention and use.
> but not to get distracted. several project including etree that have used
> wikis as a way to break thru the bottleneck of controll of page content.
> it works very well as a way to spread authority around.
Paul,
I don't think the potential return is worth the investment in
a wiki.
First, the wiki software itself will need to be set up, maintained,
and updated. Secondly, the web server will probably need to be
recompiled and reconfigured to support the wiki. Some wiki's
require databases like MySQL, which would also need to be set
up, maintained, and updated.
This seems like a tremendous amount of work to me. There are so
many areas of Linux that need better documentation. Isn't the
time of the LDP better spent focused on that documentation than
dealing with wiki software?
Finally, let me say that from my experience with projects from
inexperience and non-professional developers, like those in
languages such as PHP and Python that I've had a nightmare of a
time.
I think most wiki software falls into this category of software.
Security holes are usually rampant both in the software and in the
interpreter. Indeed, the language (PHP for example) is often even
written in a way than encourages insecure code.
In these "language of the month" interpreted languages, code and
API's are often broken between release versions of the interpreter
and there is no guarantee that you'll be able to get a "working
set of versions" between all the dependency programs to keep your
system up and running. I think the LDP risks downtime by using
such software.
While I think there's a C++ wiki out there, I don't think it's
very actively maintained.
I hope this message has illustrated the amount of documentation
that could be developed in the time it would take to create,
maintain, and update a small wiki.
- VAB
