discuss: To or not to Wiki, a summary [Was Re: small demo page]
Subject:
Re: To or not to Wiki, a summary [Was Re: small demo page]
From:
Stein Gjoen ####@####.####
Date:
21 Aug 2005 20:32:27 -0000
Message-Id: <4308E4A8.5060508@mail.nyx.net>
Pradeep Padala wrote:
> I want to contribute to improving tldp, but I don't clearly understand
> where it is heading. So as a first attempt, I have tried to summarize
> this long fruitful(?) thread, I am just going to write down my
> understanding of what people are thinking. I may have misunderstood
> something, please correct me, if so.
Actually, we seem a little adrift, a strong focus might start the
process to make TLDP more current again.
> Problem: Many HOWTOs are out-of-date and authors seem to have forgotten
> about them. Updates are slow and (tldp) world is coming to an end. (Is it?)
>
> There are many ways to tackle this, and a few are listed on TARPL[1] (I
> like the Ticket Tracker that's how I want my HOWTO to be extended).
Thanks for your support, I believe you are the first one to
agree with my on that approach, at least in public.
> Some people think that a full-fledged Wiki (not simple commenting
> mechanism) is more useful, as that allows other people to directly
> change the HOWTO. This is certainly useful for 'bringing some howtos
> back from dead' as mentioned by Yaroslav [2].
If the document license allows it and there is nothing to lose
it might be a good idea. License, as ever, remains a problematic
area, especially since 10 years of such discussions have not yet
reached a clonclusion.
> jdd put up a demo page with editable and non-editable pages at [3]. The
> idea is to allow readers to change the editable page at will and later
> autor/tldp maintainers can see the differences and merge with a stable
> non-editable one. Perhaps, we can convert the stable version to docbook.
The conversion to wiki was not optimal, I spent an hour or so redoing
a lot of tags and strange characters resulting from accented letters.
I believe it should be easier to use now.
> Wiki advantages:
> *) Quick updates - anybody can improve as they are reading the HOWTO and
> find mistakes. It also doesn't have to go through the slow/length
> TLDP review process.
> *) Easier updates - It's much easier to edit a Wiki page than an .sgml
> file. The learning curve with sgml tools is sttep. For begineers
> there's HOWTO generator [4], but later updates have to be in SGML.
The wiki markup is so simple I guess a one-to-one conversion either way
with LinuxDoc might work with only abstract and indexing tags as the
exceptions.
Re-editing with the Generator would require a little extra work on
my part to make possible. I asked some time ago if there was any
interest in that but never got any replies.
> *) Easier management - Once setup it can work on its own depending on
> the readers interest.
This part is important since we have few resources.
> Wiki disadvantages
> *) Connecting Wiki with docbook as a backend is difficult. If this is
> not possible, we have to find a better way to convert to print
> formats etc.
> *) Vandalism problems - Do we simply throw the HOWTO on a Wiki and hope
> that it turns into a master piece? or let the author tightly control
> the content by allowing only comments?
> *) What happens to the flow of a long document if it is edited by a lot
> of people? I am quite uneasy with this, as all the hardwork put in by
> the original author for the HOWTO organization etc. goes waste.
[snip]
I made a summary about a week ago and just HTML-ified it and put
it up on TARPL. It contains a few more points that also have to
be considered, mainly on the process side of things:
http://www.nyx.net/~sgjoen/Wikipedia.html
Regards,
Stein Gjoen
