Wiki documentation

[Andrew Conkling]

On 1/18/06, Brian J. Tarricone <bjt23 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> On 1/18/2006 1:57 PM, Andrew Conkling wrote:
>
> > I'd really be interested in figuring out a good way to get the
> > official docs wiki-fied
>
> I don't really see how this is a positive step.  How is this better than
> including the docs in docbook format with the packages themselves?  The
> only place the documentation is really lacking, IMHO, is in the
> development tree, which will be fixed up before 4.4 (same as what
> happened for 4.1->4.2).
>
> Would this mean ditching the documentation supplied with the package
> that gets installed to the user's HD?  If so, I'm firmly against this.
> If not, how do we keep the two in sync?

I don't think this should replace the provided documentation.  I don't
even really think any content needs to be changed on it to be helpful.
 I'm really more interested in linking everything up so that niche
things that everyone seems to know after a while can be provided and
in (ultimately) making the wiki into a good resource for new users;
the forums and mailing lists see a lot of duplicated questions and
such.  Auke's efforts in making a mailing list FAQ are great. 
(They're actually what's inspired me to make something a bit more
central.  I started something on the forum but found it to be unwieldy
so when I lost it, it was very easy to give it up.

However, that brings up an interesting point: what if we put the
documentation on the wiki and changes are made to it?  I suppose we
could monitor them to make sure they're positive and clear, but that
has the potential to provide more and better documentation (not to say
anything bad about it currently) that could be provided with future
versions of the docs with the packages.

I'm jus' sayin', ya know?  I'm not really wiki-crazy, but they do seem
like a pretty good resource when done well.

Andrew

--
http://aconkling.blogspot.com