discuss: Linuxquestions.org wiki
Subject:
Re: Linuxquestions.org wiki
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
8 Sep 2004 08:03:21 -0000
Message-Id: <20040908064907.GB1249@davespc>
On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 06:50:53PM +0000, ####@####.#### wrote:
> Hi, I'm a moderator for the linuxquestions.org Wiki
> (wiki.linuxquestions.org), a collaboratively-edited repository for all
> things Linux. Our work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> (attribution and share-alike variant) license. We'd like to
> incorporate documents from the LDP, but most of the documents, as
> licensed, can't be released under the Creative Commons without the
> copyright holder's consent. I'm writing this email in attempt to get
> that consent. I'm aware that the LDP is not the copyright holder of
> the documents it hosts, but I thought that this mailing list would be
> a good place to start.
What you are doing, if it succeeds, is to make a fork in the LDP. Then
there would be one version of a doc at the LDP and another on the wiki.
This is just plain wrong. Someone looking up info at LDP should be able
to also view the wiki doc from LDP. But even this has serious problems.
If one goes to an LDP site and finds 2 different docs with the same
title (one a wiki) which one do they look at? Thus there should only
be one document.
So I think that a wiki system like you are doing should be a part of LDP
and integrated into LDP. It takes about the same amount of time to edit
a wiki as it does to propose the same changes to the document author.
Thus in such as case there's not much need for a wiki. But there's
another common case where the author is not adequately maintaining the
doc, or where there is a needed doc, but no author. In such cases a
wiki may be a good idea.
As to format, I think that LinuxDoc is about as easy to learn as the
wiki markup. Can the wiki markup be converted into all the formats
distributed by LDP? (I'm not asking this as a rhetorical question.)
LinuxDoc can.
As for Wikipedia, it had incorrect info about a topic and I corrected
it, only to have the original incorrect info restored. At least one can
find a discussion on this. Still, Wikipedia has a great deal of useful
info. But be warned that we had one person who took over maintaining
LDP docs and made them worse, perhaps intentionally. It's likely to
happen with the wiki stuff.
So if someone changes a doc, the author needs to be sent an easy-to-read
diff of the changes. Can you do this?
So in summary, this wiki system for Linux needs to be integrated into
LDP. The database system that David Merrill was creating for LDP was
going to include wiki but never was finished. It was also going to
let people edit on-line in LinuxDoc.
Also needed is reform in LDP by making it easy for new (and old) authors
by not referring them to a long "Author Guide" and pointing them to the
complex DocBook format. I'm partly to blame for this by not following
thru on my proposals for change.
Regarding the License situation, for example, if someone has a doc under
GFDL at LDP and then lets you have a Creative Commons wiki, then
whatever editing is done to the wiki is under Creative Commons and can't
be put into the GFDL version at LDP. Possible solution: the
author/maintainer can change the LDP one to Creative Commons. And if
this can't be done due to a missing GFDL copyright owner (I'm using
informal terminology but you should know what I mean) then LDP can
always get the Creative Commons version and put it on the LDP sites.
But I still think that a wiki project like this needs to be integrated
into LDP. One problem is that some people on the staff mailing list
don't have time to read all the discuss posting (including me) and thus
will miss this. That's another problem with LDP lists. I think that
there should be one list for policy discussion (such as this email) and
another list for discussing the various HOWTO proposals, etc.
> If you're the copyright holder of a LDP document (or any other
> Linux-related document) that you would like to release under the
> Creative Commons (by-sa), drop me a line at ####@####.####
> and I'll take care of the scut work of incorporating it into our wiki.
>
> I'm also planning on contacting individual authors of articles that
> are high on our want list, but I might need help tracking down authors
> of some of the older articles.
>
> If you have the time, please come by the wiki and contribute. It would
> be wonderful to have the input of experienced technical writers!
Some of our writers are not all that great at what they do.
>
> Thank You
>
> Dan Marshall (crazyeddie)
>
>
> ______________________ http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>
David Lawyer
