Subject:
Re: Linuxquestions.org wiki - Jeff's IPv6 article
From:
Dan Marshall ####@####.####
Date:
4 Sep 2004 06:20:06 -0000
Message-Id: <41395E3E.5030301@charter.net>
Jeff Buckwalter wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> Would you be interested in a fairly long article about implementing
> IPv6, with examples, that's being finished by my student and me? Is it
> true that you don't have any formal review policy, unlike LDP, which
> is what wiki.linuxquestions.org seems to indicate? How long does it
> take, roughly, to get an article accepted?
>
> Thanks for considering this,
> --Jeff
>
I replied to this. Then I read the next email in my inbox, which
suggested I should send my replies to the mailing list also....
Okay, take two. Long Answer: We would definitely be interested in such
an article! Like any other wiki, there is no formal review process.
Instead, we rely on the many eyeballs of the users and contributors to
work out any bugs. This also means that an article might not be 100%
correct, but, on average, the result is as good, or maybe even better,
than the result of a formal review process. If you're skeptical about
how this works, I suggest checking out the Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org),
which is by far the most successful wiki. Or consider the success of
Open Source software - a wiki is the bazaar method applied to works
other than software.
We do have a few policies regarding submissions. Currently, we are
English-only, although that may change as the wiki matures and we get
more international contributors. You can't submit material if it
violates somebody else's copyright. Any material you submit will be
licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons (by-sa variant). Since
this *is* a wiki, any material you submitted will be edited and
re-edited without mercy. An article must vaguely relate to Linux. (I'm
currently working in a gray area myself there: I'm attempting to
incorporate the entire Jargon File into the wiki.) If you violate these
policies, your material will (eventually) be removed by a moderator, or
even a normal contributor.
Since there isn't any review process, the only limit to how fast an
article can be accepted is how fast you can type and/or cut-and-paste.
If you give me a link to your article, or mail it to me, I'll put it in
myself. Or even better, you could get an account with the LQwiki and do
it yourself - your call. (One difference between us and the Wikipedia -
you do have to be logged in to edit.) The only difficulty I see is the
length of the article. We try to keep articles about 1-3 pages in
length, since people will be trying to read this from their computer
monitors. But this is will be a problem with almost any imported
material, so we LQwikiers will have to come to terms with it anyway. If
you want to, you can just cut-and-paste the whole thing into one big
article and let us sort it out. Or send it to me and I'll figure it out.
Short Answer: DEAR GOD YES!!! Creative Commons is a very young license,
which means not much material is available for us to use. It's a good
enough license that we decided to use it despite the lack of material -
you have to start somewhere. Eventually, we can do a clean-room
reimplementation of the existing documentation, but it's a bit of a
torment to see all this material out there and not being able to use it
- especially since the authors have already expressed an interest in
libre documentation. (For example, the Wikipedia uses Gnu Free
Documentation License - which isn't compatible with Creative Commons
*or* the GPL.) We are so hard up for existing documentation that I'm
planning on eventually asking every author of every LDP-hosted work for
permission to use their work. *Any* Linux related documentation is welcome!
Our other great need is contributors, although this isn't an emergency.
You don't have to have much Linux experience to help out - in fact, many
of our members are simultaneously using the LQwiki for research while
using it as a notepad for things they've just figured out. Perhaps 90%
of our material could be done this way. Of course, experienced gurus are
always welcome to help out with the *other* 10%.
So thank *you* for your consideration!
