From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs Wiki Revision History Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:43:04 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <251d6b72-b760-411b-8c35-83a7788e2491@u75g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> <68deb805-c16f-48ec-96a1-5dd8fd7e5e48@x1g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <56aa1c42-303b-4150-8d96-9159487244e2@40g2000prx.googlegroups.com> <7343b66f-7262-466c-8975-9774dce22d88@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1224798057 21518 80.91.229.12 (23 Oct 2008 21:40:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:40:57 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Oct 23 23:41:57 2008 connect(): Connection refused Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Kt7wI-0005iY-UB for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:41:55 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:50912 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Kt7vC-00052T-N8 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:40:46 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs Original-Lines: 190 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.6.185.159 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1224794584 21590 127.0.0.1 (23 Oct 2008 20:43:04 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:43:04 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.6.185.159; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.22, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:163753 comp.emacs:97258 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:59093 Archived-At: 2008-10-23 Xah Lee wrote: =C2=AB(2) The content, is kinda haphazard. It is somewhat in-between of a encyclopedia-style treatment like Wikipedia and a chaotic online forum. Specifically, when you visit a article, half of article will be dialogues between different users on tips or issues or preferences.=C2=BB Alex Schroeder wrote: =C2=ABIndeed, I agree with this statement as well. But that is as it should be: The wiki is broken as specified in this respect. What follows is a short rant on what the Emacs Wiki is and is not. :)=C2=BB Alex Schroeder wrote: =C2=ABFor Emacs, I don't care about a perfect wiki that can replace the manual. Emacs is and remains the self-documenting editor. As such, the good stuff, the well explained stuff, the carefully thought out stuff, the edited and checked stuff should go into the manual -- either the Emacs manual, or the Emacs Lisp Manual, or the Emacs Lisp Introduction. I don't care. When I set up the wiki I was frustrated with how slow the FAQ was changing and the endless repetitions on the newsgroups and mailing lists. That's where the wiki fits in: It changes faster than the FAQ, it has less repetitions than the newsgroups and mailing lists, but it is not as structured and honed as the manual is.=C2=BB Now the emacswiki has been there for a while, we can think how to make it better and work toward that goal, as opposed to what the original intention was. Alex wrote: =C2=ABComparing it to the Wikipedia, where the wiki is the real thing, or to the Emacs manual, is a no brainer. Of course it doesn't compare. But it doesn't have to. The wiki is in a separate category.=C2=BB =C2=ABAnd of course the Emacs Wiki has the benefit of letting other people put their text where their mouth is: If people like Xah feel that the text of the wiki is lacking in quality, feel free to step up and work on it. Just like Free Software, complaining is far less effective than doing.=C2=BB Criticism is not complaining, and even complaining is a significant form of contribution when done naturally. A significant contribution of major philosophers to society throughout history, is to criticize or complain. =E2=80=9CComplaining=E2=80=9D is not necessarily inferior to = =E2=80=9Cdoing=E2=80=9D. A healthy, prosperous community, needs both. in the tech geeker's open source community, there's a major problem of the mindset of =E2=80=9Ccontribution=E2=80=9D, where almost anything less t= han code contribution is deem by tech geekers as wanton bitching, especially when it arose in a online discussion turned quarrel. This =E2=80=9Ccontribution=E2=80=9D mindset does lots of harm to the growth and = progress of open source community. To various degrees, it lessens the power of discussion, spur forking of projects, duplication of coding effort, proliferation of less quality code. (See also: =E2=80=A2 Responsible Software Licensing http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/responsible_license.html =E2=80=A2 Criticism versus Constructive Criticism http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/criticism.html ) For example, why do you fork UseModWiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UseM= odWiki ) in the first place? In some tech geeker's sense, you are reinventing the wheel. if i quietly grabbed your emacswiki content (which is perfectly legal and guaranteed a right under FSF associated licenses) and shape it in the way i think is proper (i.e. using MediaWiki), effective a fork, such deed is often controversial as you must know, and often it spur animosity among groups and create factions. whether forking in general does good or bad to society, is a complex issue and there's no simple answer. When philosophies and vision or methods between developers differ significantly, forking is probably the only recourse. And such forked project contribute diversity (as linux distros), and sometimes ultimately determines which is better one, or may spur huge competition and change (as Xemacs did to emacs). But on the other hand, sometimes forking is merely a result of political animosity. (e.g. =E2=80=9Csomebody else's=E2=80=9D project vs =E2= =80=9CMy=E2=80=9D project.) I can, and i might, take your blessing and create a alternative emacswiki, or even consume emacswiki.org with your help. That takes a lot dedication, time, and some money to do it. As i mentioned, MediaWiki interface is familiar to some one hundred of thousand time more users than OddMuse, and there are perhaps hundreds times more tools to work with MediaWiki than OddMuse. With MediaWiki, you also automatically have a lot features, such as images, math formula formatting, display of audio, citation, category, syntax highlighting, language support, each of these far more robust and diverse than OddMuse if it support it. These features, seemingly not much useful for a wiki for emacs, but you'd be surprised what people do and how things grow. (for one example, emacs wiki could use lots of screenshots, and with that, you'll eventually need MediaWiki's image annotation and citation features) one reason you cited against MediaWiki is that it's rather difficult or complex to install. I agree OddMuse is far more easier to install. (just one perl file) However, you are a expert in the Web App field, and so am i. For a web app professional, to install MediaWiki, with its associated database etc, isn't that hard. Even i haven't done so, i think you'll agree, that it takes within 1 week man hour to install it with all content transferred from emacswiki. As you detailed, OddMuse is pretty much just your pet project. That and its simplicity is pretty much the reasons you use it for emacswiki. As project gets large, this cannot be remain so without hampering the growth of emacswiki. Alex wrote: =C2=ABThe only thing I will oppose very strongly is the setting up of guidelines and requirements and all sorts of foolish rules, because that doesn't improve the text. It just prevents other people from posting. Way to go, social skills.=C2=BB I think some guideline is sufficient. The gist is that, someone needs to provide that guideline, or give a indication that coherent article is the goal as opposed to maintaining a conversation of wiki editors. In this case, that someone should be you, because you are the original creator and thus most suitable and authoritative. This guideline or indication is important. For example, sometimes i thought about cleaning out the discussion-oriented texts... which usually means simply delete them. However, if done, it'll raise a lot problems. People will revert it, ask why you delete them, considering it removal of record, resulting quarrel or unease, or even consider it absolute vandal. I being already a controversial figure. As you know, i've been ban'd in freenodes's emacs irc, while you were intimately familiar with the deal, which is also associated with the emacswiki. (see http://xahlee.org/emacs/xah_ban_emacs_irc.html ) If i start to, as you say, =E2=80=9Ccontribute=E2=80=9D by editing of the article of removing con= versations, that's not gonna go well. Note the fact that the quality of many pages there are in very bad quality as considered as a article. The editing effort will pretty much mean lots of brainless deletions if it is to be meaningful ... some of these conversation contains valuable info, but the discussion style makes it hard to extract info or a huge amount of editing effort. In short, there needs to be some authoritative guideline. Then, the conversation styled dialogues of the wiki would wane. Without such a guideline, and letting tech geekers go freely on what each think is best, is not likely to make emacswiki coherent anytime soon. Large projects requires a leadership. Richard Stallman, is a good example here. In summary, there are 2 things i'm saying, and have tried to say to you 2 or 3 years ago, albeit perhaps in a terse manner. One is to adopt WikiMedia, instead feeling attached to your personal code. (2) It needs a authoritative guideline for emacswiki to grow. For (2), please dont think it is some Big Brother heavy hand on control. The guidelines needs not be harsh, strict, or even enforced. However, it is necessary, that there is such a guideline, and it be required reading for emacswiki editors. (think of Richard Stallman's GNU Manifesto, who actually goes to the trouble of going into legalities with its GPL and FSF corporation.) =C2=ABAlex, have you considered using a third party wiki engine for emacs wiki before?=C2=BB Alex wrote: =C2=ABNo, never. I use my own software because I know exactly what it does, I have full control over the code, and I feel very comfortable extending it. Switching to something else would mean more work for me. That's why I suggested that anybody interested in it set up their own site, start mirroring Emacs Wiki page content, look at all the background jobs, redirects, URL rewrite rules, text formatting rules, etc. And when they're finished, handing over the domain name will be a trivial thing by comparison. But I'm not willing to do the work for somebody else. They need to do it themselves.=C2=BB Ok. Thanks for the explanation. Xah =E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/ =E2=98=84