discuss: Thread: small demo page

Quoting jdd ####@####.####

> I said "a bit", a bit only. 

And I say _more_ than a bit.  I hope you don't think your opinion is
disposative?

> it's not really a troll. 

Eh, pull the other one.

> do you read the mails that started this thread some weeks ago?

Yes.  Why do you ask?

In point of fact, I've followed all of it (with varying degrees of
interest, as I've had other things to do, as well), including the bit
where you and a couple of other people have been behaving like the very
most extreme parodies of wiki proponents.  

This business of coming marching into here, announcing your single-factor
salvation with vanishingly few details and no pilot project worth
mentioning, expecting to be taken seriously, and _thinking that nobody's 
ever said this stuff before_, is really a bit much.

[...]

> we can't live without seeing the web move.

Fatuous bromides?  Please.  Kindly try again.

Look, if you actually have something to offer, prototype it --
meaningfully.  Show us.

Rick Moen wrote:

> where you and a couple of other people have been behaving like the very
> most extreme parodies of wiki proponents.

if you really think this, we are really not on the same way. 
I propose a carefully testing period for adding a new 
communication way on tldp. is that "most extreme"?

> salvation with vanishingly few details and no pilot project worth
> mentioning,

are you kidding? we are here 4 or 5 people ready to go. I 
only think you should wait the hollidays end to start to 
have the feeling of out of bussiness members, is that dreaming?

  expecting to be taken seriously, and _thinking that nobody's
> ever said this stuff before_, is really a bit much.

I _do_ know this have already been discussed long time ago. 
But, it was _long_ time ago and the world is moving. Do you 
think Novell is full of fools? they opensuse site is a 
mediawiki. it's just one example among many.

> Look, if you actually have something to offer, prototype it --
> meaningfully.  Show us.

isn't what I'm precisely doing in that thread?

what are your poposals to the problem of authors going away 
and HOWTO's beeing out of date? wiki is certainly not _the_ 
solution, only a little step and we need more.

but if tldp do nothing, the situation is not to be better.



jdd


-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

jdd wrote:
>  I only think you 

sorry, "we" should wait...

jdd


-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

Saqib Ali wrote:

>>but the real question is: do the tldp need a new way to
>>communicate between users and authors. I think personnaly


Several new ways have already been proposed and even illustrated.

>>that there is a great lack of comms here, but I know also,


Comms? Communications? Withing TLDP or from readers? I am
unsure exactly what is being meant here.

>>there is much documentation out of the ldp, now, and often
>>more up to date. tldp may be silently dying...


Some of us are working hard to keep TLDP current, to improve
usefulness and usability and to widen the scope. The very fact
that there are several HOWTO-like organisations coming up is
to me a proof of this. FAQs.org, Wikibooks and a third place
mentioned a few weeks ago are just some examples.

> i personally think TLDP as it currently exist should now retire. Most
> of the HOWTOs (including mine) are not needed anymore, since the linux
> distros and other opensource apps have started producing excellent
> documentation. Check out the documentation produced by RedHat. It is
> excellent. Same goes for Apache.


This argument comes up every now and then. My standard argument
is that the TLDP collection can be downloaded, searched and read
before downloading the applications that come with their own set
of documentation.

With names like konqueror, Soulfind and Zenwalk being the norm
it is hard to get to know what to download to find out more. That
is another reason why I proposed an overview category of documents.

> TLDP should now change their business philosophy. I would like to see
> a searchable (google-able) database of the documentations produced by
> OpenSource/Linux vendors. The readers should be able to add comments


Already proposed a long time ago. We have a cooperation with the
Linux Brochure project but once again the lack of resources has
once again meant that we have not gotten the full benefits nor a
proper integration.

Proper integration with FAQs, RFCs, TRs and more has also been
proposed years ago. Same with cooperation with Debian and Redhat
on documentation and man pages. Even SCO provides a man page
services on their web pages but after more than 10 years TLDP
still have not found the resources to do so.

> and provide feedback and sample code to each topic, much like what
> mySQL does.
> 
> Any thoughts?

The situation is probably quite clear to most people here. There
is a lot of work ahead. I like to think I am pulling my weight.
Many others work hard too. Still, we need a lot of new people here.

I am not giving up.


Regards,
    Stein Gjoen

Hi

> Most tldp authors do not answer anymore. most HOWTO are out of date.


Most implies majority. I dont think thats the case here.You need to 
contact all of the authors or reviewed all of the HOWTO's to determine 
that. If you have really done that, let the list know about that information

regards
Rahul

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
> 
>> Most tldp authors do not answer anymore. most HOWTO are out of date.
> 
> 
> 
> Most implies majority. I dont think thats the case here.You need to 
> contact all of the authors or reviewed all of the HOWTO's to determine 
> that. If you have really done that, let the list know about that 
> information

http://lists.tldp.org/index.cgi?1:mss:9474

the mail that was the gran-father of this thread:

"  In other words: a good half of
our authors didn't reply."

jdd

-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

Hi

>
>
> "  In other words: a good half of
> our authors didn't reply." 

A follow up is that you need to give them more time to determine status

regards
Rahul

Quoting jdd ####@####.####

> Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> >where you and a couple of other people have been behaving like the very
> >most extreme parodies of wiki proponents.
> 
> if you really think this, we are really not on the same way. 
> I propose a carefully testing period for adding a new 
> communication way on tldp. is that "most extreme"?

I said nothing about there being anything the least bit wrong 
with wikis:  I said you'd been conducting yourselves like 
_parodies of wiki proponents_.  The blatant trolling was merely
icing on the cake; it was just one ludicrous step too far.

> >salvation with vanishingly few details and no pilot project worth
> >mentioning,
> 
> are you kidding? we are here 4 or 5 people ready to go.

Then _go_:  Do that pilot project.  Nobody's stopping you.  
Of course, that requires actual work, unlike all of this time-wasting 
advocacy babbling you've been chewing up our time with.

> >Look, if you actually have something to offer, prototype it --
> >meaningfully.  Show us.
> 
> isn't what I'm precisely doing in that thread?

Absolutely _no_, in fact.  Thus my point.  Do I need to dredge up a
definition of the term "pilot project" for you?

Rick Moen wrote:

> Then _go_:  Do that pilot project.  Nobody's stopping you.  

how? I have no admin rights on ibiblio to do that. tldp 
folks have not even say ok. I'm ready do do if the tldp 
wants it.  I do already this for projects less valuable than 
tldp.

I don't think anybody can make anything on the tldp name 
like this.

> Absolutely _no_, in fact.  Thus my point.  Do I need to dredge up a
> definition of the term "pilot project" for you?

only quote the "how become tldp project pilot" to me. who 
gives the "go"?

I need an account on ibiblio. ftp access and mysql access. 
for the fr.susewiki.org project, here is what the admin gave 
me (pass masqued of course)

....................
OK, I've got the site installed.  You can see it at 
http://fr.susewiki.org .  I set up an email account for you, 
####@####.#### .  Right now it is forwarded to your 
free.fr email address; let me know if you want me to set it 
up so you can use it directly.

You can ssh into the server: username is "jdanield" password 
is "XXXXX" host is fr.susewiki.org .  You can ftp with the 
same username and password but I think the host is 
ftp.fr.susewiki.org .  The database name is "susewiki_fr" 
host is data.fr.susewiki.org username is "susewiki_fruser" 
password is "XXXXX"; you should be able to get to phpMyAdmin 
at http://data.fr.susewiki.org and use the name and password 
above.

I set up the "master" account with the wiki for you the 
login is "jdd" and the password is "XXXX".  You can change 
that if you want.

.........

in fact with ssh and ftp I can do the wiki install job 
myself. It's even probably not mandatory to have ssh (but 
more convenient)

and then???? may I use the tldp name?

I wait...

sincerely yours
jdd


-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 11:21:51AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting jdd ####@####.####
> > are you kidding? we are here 4 or 5 people ready to go.
> 
> Then _go_:  Do that pilot project.  Nobody's stopping you.  
> Of course, that requires actual work, unlike all of this time-wasting 
> advocacy babbling you've been chewing up our time with.
> 

I am very sorry for my jumping in, but... I think I rather  have
something which may be considered in the future (that future being near
or far depends on your optimism) such a  project. I run a project aiming
at translating all free  Linux and Unix documentation into Ukrainian.
Having, however, full-time job, I cannot do it the TLDP way. So I have
set up a Mediawiki site and encouraged people to contribute, so that the
process is actually a kind of laissez faire (or, bazaar to its maximum
extent), and I don't have to do what others are able and willing to do.

That being said, I have run into some problems which one has to keep in
mind. 

The first is, Mediawiki has no syntax features to make up documents in
semantic, not presentational manner. It means that no 1:1
to-and-from-Docbook conversion is possible. As for the moment, of course,
because it is an itch for me and other volunteers, which means it just has
to be done.

The second: even given that Mediawiki has the "subpages" feature, it has
no mechanism of actually linking subpages together as parts of a big
whole. This basically means that TOCs for big guides (which is traffic
wasting to put into one big page) have to made by hand, which often
renders information, well... inaccurate. 

The third: not all decent authors and translators are happy with the way
a wiki works. They want to be in control of what is contributed. And
they won't give me anything unless they have control there. While we may
agree or disagree with them, on one hand, they may make very precious
contributions, and on the other hand, by everything, we *must* respect
their wishes. Not  because they are right or whatever, but because it is
their wish, period.

And Mediawiki lacks so suitable in that situation Unixy user/group
permissions for pages, which would solve it once and for all. Mediawiki
people are giong to implement a thing like that in 1.6 release, so I 
just wait to not reinvent the wheel,but if that's not flexible enough, I
will have to make my own implementation.

And, besides, there ain't such thing as premoderation on contributions
some authors want to have. And it is damn cumbersome to do, I need to
say.

So, if anyone goes for a project like this with a wiki, at least these
problems have to be resolved. And if you manage to do it sooner than I,
please let me know :)

P.S. Sorry if some of my English is broken... 

-- 
X Windows: The problem for your problem.