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: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:55:22 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <56aa1c42-303b-4150-8d96-9159487244e2@40g2000prx.googlegroups.com> References: <251d6b72-b760-411b-8c35-83a7788e2491@u75g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> <68deb805-c16f-48ec-96a1-5dd8fd7e5e48@x1g2000prh.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 1224618085 17332 80.91.229.12 (21 Oct 2008 19:41:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:41:25 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 21 21:42:23 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 1KsN7V-0007BK-8a for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:42:21 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38632 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KsN6P-0004DR-Va for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:41:13 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!40g2000prx.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 96 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.6.185.159 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1224615323 28134 127.0.0.1 (21 Oct 2008 18:55:23 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:55:23 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 40g2000prx.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:163659 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:58999 Archived-At: Xah Lee wrote: =C2=ABI have been thinking for a while for doing this ... register a domain, install MediaWiki, and copy emacswiki.org content over.=C2=BB On Oct 21, 5:04 am, ack wrote: > MediaWiki? You've got to be kidding. A database is by no means a > requirement for such a thing as emacswiki (or most wiki's for that > matter). > > Oddmuse works really quite well and it's text formatting is much nicer > than that of MediaWiki in my opinion. > > You of course are free to do what you like, but for the love of all > things good and nice, please choose some other wiki (almost any other > wiki) than MediaWiki. Wikipedia has been the world top most 10 visited site since about 2005. (see http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=3Dglobal ) =C2=ABWikipedia receives between 20,000 and 45,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day.=C2=BB =E2=80=94 http://en.wikipedia.org/w= iki/Wikipedia =C2=ABEnglish Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007=C2=BB =E2=80=94 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia Media has a user base of few million times more than OddMuse. The familiarity of users is important when it is of that magnitude. Similarly, tools that works with MediaWiki is some hunderd, thousands, times more, in various computing langs, than OddMuse. please see also: Emacs wiki Problems http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_wiki_problem.html excerpt: =C2=AB Emacs wiki Problems The emacs wiki ( http://www.emacswiki.org/ ), started by Alex Schroeder sometimes in 2005 or before, is great. However, i think it could've been better. (1) The wiki software used is Oddmuse, which is a perl script of 4k lines, using flat files as database. As such, it is not comprehensive or powerful. (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. I commented to Alex about these problems. I suggest that it should use the same software Wikipedia uses, the MediaWiki=E2=86=97. So that, it is fa= r more powerful, with large scale programer support, and the user interface for the wiki will be one that's widely known to millions of users world-wide. (note: Oddmuse=E2=86=97 is something written by Alex himself, a pet love of sorts) I also suggested that the writing guidelines should follow Wikipedia's style. Specifically, the content editing should be one with the goal of creating a comprehensive, coherent, article that gives readers info or tutorial about the subject. (as opposed to, serving partly as a online forum between emacs users and maintaining dialogue integrity) I think there's a lot potential to emacs wiki. It could, for example, develop into a comprehensive elisp library archive (e.g. CPAN=E2=86=97). Listing packages by category, with each package come with a article that discuss its author, purpose, status, caveats, tutorial, similar packages ...etc. And the packages needs not just be modes... but libraries as in most languages. (for example, js2 and nxml modes are both complete parsers for javascript and xml, each of thousands lines of elisp code. They should actually be several libraries, so that these parsers can be widely deployed as language modules, not confined in use just in one editing mode. Such is largely not done in emacs/ elisp community due to emacs being primarily a text-editor with relatively few elisp programers... but is slowing happening anyway (it is something that eventually must happen). A good wiki can be great help in ushering necessary improvements and increase the speed of evolution.) For the above to take shape, the wiki must adopt a style so that articles aim to be a coherent treatment of the subject (as opposed to dialogue and random tips). (and this is done by crafting the contribution guidelines or rules; exemplarily done by Wikipedia) Also, i'd think the wiki's software should adopt something widely supported such as MediaWiki, as opposed to one-man's pet project. =C2=BB Xah =E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/ =E2=98=84