From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alex Schroeder Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs Wiki Revision History Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:00:54 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <7343b66f-7262-466c-8975-9774dce22d88@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> 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> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1224768823 3829 80.91.229.12 (23 Oct 2008 13:33:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:33:43 +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 15:34:43 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 1Kt0Jz-0006CX-UN for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:33:59 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:32993 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Kt0Ij-0003qc-Lf for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:32:33 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 106 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 77.56.183.73 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1224759655 15400 127.0.0.1 (23 Oct 2008 11:00:55 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:00:55 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=77.56.183.73; posting-account=gsUXzwkAAADKb9uogNWeYQ7wmFQuCBfA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; de; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092414 Firefox/3.0.3,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:163724 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:42:01 -0400 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:59066 Archived-At: > On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:55:22 -0700 (PDT), Xah gmail.com> said: > Xah> (2) The content, is kinda haphazard. It is somewhat in-between of > Xah> a encyclopedia-style treatment like Wikipedia and a chaotic > Xah> online forum. Specifically, when you visit a article, half of > Xah> article will be dialogues between different users on tips or > Xah> issues or preferences. Paul R gmail.com> writes: > This is the only statement I can agree with. Indeed, 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. :) For 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. Comparing 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. And 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. The 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. This is the end of the rant. > But AFAICT, Alex has been > most of the time on his own to create and maintain emacswiki software. > I guess he would welcome some help concerning hosting, development or > administration. Actually I am quite happy with how things are going. I spend very little time on Emacs Wiki specific things. I like working on my wiki engine; I use it for other projects including my homepage, my dad's blog, and so on. If somebody feels the urge to write an extension that we should use for Emacs Wiki, feel free to step forward. As the spam problem is very much under control at the moment, there's also very little to do for administrators. Hosting is costing me EUR 20 a month which isn't so bad. I'd feel ridiculous accepting donations for that. I'd rather people donated to some charity or joined the FSF. Or -- even better -- people could donate time and energy by improving the actual text on Emacs Wiki. That's much more important than the software. > Alex, have you considered using a third party wiki engine for emacs > wiki before? No, 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. > In the meantime, thank you Alex for running emacswiki, a precious > ressource. Thanks! :)