discuss: Thread: status report author checkup

On 8/12/05, David Lawyer ####@####.#### wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 02:24:40PM +0200, jdd wrote:
>><CUT>
><CUT>
> A big problem with reader comments is that most readers don't know the
> topic (if they knew the topic, they wouldn't be reading about it).  So
> comments from them may not reveal errors, etc.
> 
> At present, if the author uses a mailto url in the doc, then just a
> click will start an email to the author.

So you have a lot of experience with the difficult group of people,
but you don't have so much experience with the useful group of people,
which not always want do get involved as a maintainer or have much
contact with people even by mail. Some people does not want to
contribute because they are used to that maintainers are so busy that
they don't have time to reply or include the contribution.
These people actually exist. With a wiki these people can be included.


-- 
Knut Olav Bøhmer

David Lawyer wrote:
> I don't understand.  Would there be a wiki for each howto
> 
I think many non wiki users misundestand the effectiveness
of this media.

get a look at http://www.wikipedia.org/. you (yes, _you_)
can edit any of this wiki pages. Read the pages, do you
think it's stupid or of no value?

in fact, happily, there are much more intelligent people
than stupid ones and the probable troubles are very quickly
corrected by the users themselves.

The used wiki, mediawiki, is a very good one, a bit
difficult at first approach, but for example, it provides
for any page a "discussion page" where comments can be
written by users

  for
> discussion of that howto and of Linux problems within the
> scope of the howto?

I think we need only one wiki, on one place (ibiblio is a
very nice place). each author that wants it could open his
own page. mediawiki offers a self indexed system (names
"category"), but it's possible to have some sort of index
pages. Most of the time one can let the users make this - it
works :-)

   I've got a problem with this, since some of the email I 
get is
> asking for help by people that haven't even read the
> doc., some is poorly written, some don't provide enough
> info on their problem, some are asking for help with a MS
> Windows OS, etc.  In other words there is a lot of noise
> and readers shouldn't be exposed to this noise.

they should!! they can also give an answer :-). But a wiki
is _not_ a forum (like phpBB), it's not for real time
discussion. not for asking questions, but for giving
answers. It's more like a FAQ.

> Except for a howto that not being maintained.  Then
> people could look at the comments and see that the author
> is not responding, then that's useful.

each page is dated and the number of visits quoted. this can
also be a valuable mean of seeing the interest about the HOWTO.

   It would be nice to have someone from LDP read over all the
> comments on all the howtos, but that's a full-time job.

usefull, but not necessary at all. _anybody_ is a proof
reader here.

> At present, if the author uses a mailto url in the doc,
> then just a click will start an email to the author.

it's up to him to do so or not

> This is why I think it best to use LinuxDoc.

I have always be in touch with you on this subject, but this
is not what the ldp choose to do :-(

> paragraphs need no tags.  I've looked at wiki markup and
> think that LinuxDoc markup is no more complex.  But I
> guess there are more people around that know wiki markup
> so I think that a wiki->linuxdoc converter would be nice
> too.

beware, there is no "wiki markup", nearly each wiki have
it's own markup. mediawiki tend to be the most used wiki in
hudge projects (for example, it's used on the new novell's
opensuse.org).

it has an automatic TOC system. any word enclosed in "==" is
a title, the more "=" the smaller title. html tags are
allowed, new pages are given by [[name of page with space
allowed]]. With this in mind,  one can type.

and any browser can do :-). The problem is more to have a
local copy.

But I don't advocate to write a HOWTO entirely with a wiki
(not now).

> I'm not sure that the wikis would be used all that much
> and it puts a burden on every author to check out his
> wiki frequently for comments or modifications.

not at all. author can be mailed in case of modification if
he wants to or don't care at all, or once a year.

I receive from time to time propositions for additions to my
HOWTO, they are added... years after if ever. on a wiki
discuss page this could have been done almost immediatly.

> howto, and never know there is a wiki for comments, since
> they never read the part of the howto that links to the
> wiki.

I don't think individual wikis are so good. a central wiki
place would be much better, and don't forget google indexes
very well the wikis. (my own personal one was indexed a week
after it was created :-)

> I assume that all howtos would contain a link to their
> wiki comments.

in mediawiki, any page have it's own comment page, used or
not. these are discussion pages, to be added to the HOWTO if
necessary and if the author wants.

it's even possible to make the real howto read only to force
discussion page use (but I don't think it's a good idea)

> that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database
> could be used to email the author the changes made to the
> wiki.

each media wiki user, author or not, can - if he wants to -
be mailed (there is a "watch this page" feature

in fact mediawiki is done for minimal admin burden. The own
mediawiki help page is self done. The fr translation, for
example is fairly incomplete, because no user come to
complete it (I add some lines sometime :-)

and this is good. if the users can't do the job, the job
will not be done. this is a good system.

make a try, open the wiki, advertise it and watch... if
nobody cares, it will die by itself.

sincerely
jdd


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Machtelt Garrels wrote:

> On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, David Lawyer wrote:
> 
>>But wikis to discuss a doc?  Good idea perhaps (but see above), except


A similar idea is what is behing the ticket system I showed earlier
where any reader can make a comment in a sidebar to the article that
the author maintains alone.

>>I wonder how many readers would find it.  What % of readers download
>>howtos (such as the Debian packages) and read them off-line?  Then
>>online readers many use Google, etc. to find just a section of a
>>howto, and never know there is a wiki for comments, since they never
>>read the part of the howto that links to the wiki.


Even worse, Google frequently finds Wikipedia mirrors such as
Answers.com that uses banner advertising, rather than the
advertisement free Wikipedia.

> Apart from my personal aversion, I am worried about a couple of things:
> 
> - - How does wiki-usage relate to our mirror sites?


That is non-obvious and a decision has to be made. Either:

  - a single centralised wiki for TLDP with static pages
   extracted to mirrors. The problem is when to do this
    - daily, with all the possible vandalisms?
    - weekly, just after a freeze for inspection?
    - monthly or so, using a baselined version?

  - all mirrors use wiki and synchronise themselves. Difficult.


> - - Apart from all the useless comments by readers of good faith, how about
> those small-minded people who use impolite and rude language?


Looking at Wikipedia I see the trend of vandalism is on
the increase. Just the last 6 months has seen more vandalism
than the previous years for some pages.

We should also expect robot vandalism inserting spam, just
like the blogging world has seen. Personally I would not like
fast and unchecked mirroring of vandalised HOWTOs advertising
things I get hundres of offers for every day.

> - - Wiki-to-docbook/linuxdoc: does that mean that wiki comments can directly
> be used to change a document, presumbly by the author?  I don't see how
> this would work...


The markup at Wikipedia is very simple. Converting back and
forth with LinuxDoc could probably be done in a small shellscript.

>>The vapor-ware database for LDP was going to tie in with wikis and
>>that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database could be used
>>to email the author the changes made to the wiki.  A good database
>>and content management system is needed by LDP much more than a wiki,
>>but it's a lot more work to implement.
>>
> 
> Agreed.  I don't know anything about databases or it would already have
> been there.  We need
> 
> - - somebody who is committed
> - - agreement of iBiblio
> - - overview of data that should be managed in a DB

Another possibility is to see if we can be sponsored by an
established document management company with their product.
The issues we face are not by any means new, and these have
been adressed by several systems. I just have not seen any
that are free.

Regards,
    Stein Gjoen

Stein Gjoen wrote:

> That is non-obvious and a decision has to be made. Either:
> 
>  - a single centralised wiki for TLDP with static pages
>   extracted to mirrors.

no mirrors at all, at least for the moment (official 
mirrors, I mean)

jdd


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pour m'écrire, aller sur:
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jdd wrote:

> Stein Gjoen wrote:
> 
>> That is non-obvious and a decision has to be made. Either:
>>
>>  - a single centralised wiki for TLDP with static pages
>>   extracted to mirrors.
> 
> 
> no mirrors at all, at least for the moment (official mirrors, I mean)


TLDP has hundreds of mirrors today, switching over to
no official mirrors would mean an enormous breakage.
Connectivity is not the best all over the world so I
doubt we can force everyone to use the iBiblio server.

The question of CD ROM distributions also needs to be
addressed.

Regards,
    Stein Gjoen

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On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, jdd wrote:

<-snip->

> I think we need only one wiki, on one place (ibiblio is a
> very nice place). each author that wants it could open his
> own page. mediawiki offers a self indexed system (names

And it should be optional, right?  I don't like the idea of having a wiki
by default.  It should be each individual author's choice.

<-snip->

> and any browser can do :-). The problem is more to have a
> local copy.
>
> But I don't advocate to write a HOWTO entirely with a wiki
> (not now).

But maybe there is need of a Wiki-HOWTO, if we ever embark on this track
:)  As well for the HOW as for the WHY.

> it's even possible to make the real howto read only to force
> discussion page use (but I don't think it's a good idea)

You mean people could change the document without the author's consent?
And that is the default behaviour?

> make a try, open the wiki, advertise it and watch... if
> nobody cares, it will die by itself.

It is not as simple as that, I believe.  Our docs are hosted on iBiblio's
servers and we need their approval for installing new software.

Tille.

- --
Machtelt Garrels                ####@####.####
Review Coordinator    	 	http://www.tldp.org/authors/

My Penguin, my freedom.         http://tille.xalasys.com

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Machtelt Garrels wrote:

> And it should be optional, right?

on my mind, I see all this completely optional. it's a thing 
added to the tldp stuff - the web is moving, no? tldp don't 
move much :-)

> But maybe there is need of a Wiki-HOWTO, if we ever embark on this track
> :)  As well for the HOW as for the WHY.

for the hox there is 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki#Documentation. the 
why is why not? why internet? why linux? why open source? 
I'm sure there is somewhere a wiki advocacy :-)

> You mean people could change the document without the author's consent?
> And that is the default behaviour?

this is the base of the initial wiki way. but it's so easy 
to choose that should be let at the authors choice.

> It is not as simple as that, I believe.  Our docs are hosted on iBiblio's
> servers and we need their approval for installing new software.

that is evident. however anybody can install a wiki on 
sourceforge. Can somebody ask ibiblio on this subject? if 
ibiblio says no, the discussion has no more subject :-)

remember that I see this as an open white board mean of 
communication between LDP, the authors and the users, not in 
any way a replacement for the good way ldp runs today.

jdd


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PS: On Friday 12 August 2005 04:46 am, Machtelt Garrels wrote:
> > The vapor-ware database for LDP was going to tie in with wikis and
> > that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database could be used
> > to email the author the changes made to the wiki.  A good database
> > and content management system is needed by LDP much more than a wiki,
> > but it's a lot more work to implement.

A wiki is (or can be used as) a (free-format, collaborative) database (and a 
content managment system).  If I needed a database as you describe I'd think 
seriously about "prototyping" it with a wiki.

If you're interested and want help, let me know, maybe starting with a list of 
what data you'd want in a database.

regards,
Randy Kramer

PS: Oh, while I'm writing, iirc, somebody (David Lawyer) questioned whether 
there'd be a separate wiki for each HOWTO.  I wouldn't do that--I'd use 
TWiki, and put each document in a separate web (i.e., directory or folder).

>
> Agreed.  I don't know anything about databases or it would already have
> been there.  We need
>
> - somebody who is committed
> - agreement of iBiblio
> - overview of data that should be managed in a DB
>
> Tille.

> PS: On Friday 12 August 2005 04:46 am, Machtelt Garrels wrote:
>> > The vapor-ware database for LDP was going to tie in with wikis and
>> > that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database could be used
>> > to email the author the changes made to the wiki.  A good database
>> > and content management system is needed by LDP much more than a wiki,
>> > but it's a lot more work to implement.
>
> A wiki is (or can be used as) a (free-format, collaborative)
> database (and a content managment system).  If I needed a database
> as you describe I'd think seriously about "prototyping" it with a wiki.

Randy and jdd bring up some good/valid points. For the longest
time, I've been against this (primarily due to the mirror situation,
which relies on static HTML content), but I now think it's time
for a shift. We've been stagnating for a long time now and bringing
in the wiki technology might be exactly what we need.

I support the effort, and I will assist to make it possible.
I think we should move forward with a prototype and, in parallel,
create a list of issues (such as mirror support) that need to be
addressed.

Paul (ibiblio), is it possible to set this up on ibiblio?

--
Greg / LDP

> ...
> Paul (ibiblio), is it possible to set this up on ibiblio?

I opened a help ticket with ibiblio and they responded right
away (as usual - excellent service from ibiblio!):

   "[we] are more than welcome to install wiki software on ibiblio".

Greg / LDP