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 15:47:55 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <7bddb878-9f4c-4140-827c-83cd29c96e5f@l77g2000hse.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> <7343b66f-7262-466c-8975-9774dce22d88@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1224805267 9361 80.91.229.12 (23 Oct 2008 23:41:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:41:07 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Oct 24 01:42:08 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 1Kt9oP-0005bf-5Q for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:41:54 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:33967 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Kt9nI-00036O-Fn for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:40:44 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!l77g2000hse.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs Original-Lines: 230 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 77.56.183.73 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1224802075 10814 127.0.0.1 (23 Oct 2008 22:47:55 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:47:55 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: l77g2000hse.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:163759 comp.emacs:97260 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:59101 Archived-At: On 23 Okt., 22:43, Xah wrote: > 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. Then again, philosophers don't have the option of doing. The same is true for public works, governments in general, basically anything that you can't do in your free time by yourself. But writing software and writing text is different. The know-how is there, the ability is there, the tools are free and available. It's not the same thing. > =93Complaining=94 is not necessarily inferior to =93doing=94. A > healthy, prosperous community, needs both. I disagree. A community with people that keep complaining without contributing is a community that I don't want to contribute to. > For example, why do you fork UseModWiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use= ModWiki > ) in the first place? In some tech geeker's sense, you are reinventing > the wheel. Indeed, why did I? Did you check? Have you read up on the history of UseModWiki? I guess you haven't, or you'd know. > 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. Sure. But such is your freedom. And you don't have to grab it quietly. I invite you to do it. Please do it. > 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. Well, it depends. You could start with hosting for USD 5 per month at hcoop.net and a domain name for EUR 12 a year, as far as I can tell. And remember, once you've proven that you can do it, we'll have a vote. If people vote for your site, I'll give you control over the domain name emacswiki.org. Yes, it'll be a bummer for my personal page, and for my dad's blog, and for my godchild, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice because I don't want to stand in the way of progress. If you can serve Emacs' interest better than I can, then I want to support you. I really do. > 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. Yes, but who needs them? Oddmuse also has benefits over Mediawiki that you seem to be unaware of, or uninterested in. That's ok, I don't mind. > 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) You are right. Then again, Oddmuse also offers many extensions. I guess I'd be more interested in developing new extensions or improving existing extensions for Oddmuse instead of migrating it all to Mediawiki and giving those extensions a try. Really, somebody will have to do the work of migrating the wiki to Mediawiki. There's no way around that. No amount of Mediawiki praise will make that work easier. Somebody has to do it. You could be that person. You should try to be that person. > 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. Excellent. You seem to be well suited for the job! This is a great opportunity. > 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. It is a strange conclusion to draw, but that's ok. I thought that the main problem in wiki growth and maintenance is the text, not the software. But I could be wrong. Once you have a working site with all the necessary extensions, URL rewrites, redirections, maintenance jobs, and interfaces to other systems such as the Emacs Lisp List, it will be much easier to see whether the new software will allow Emacs Wiki to grow and improve faster. > 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. Then again, this is not how I want to run a community. If I have any authority at all, that would not be the way I want to use it. Perhaps that's why I have some authority =96 because people know I'll not get on their nerves. Then again, since I practically never use it, we'll never know for sure whether I have any. I think the onus falls on you to lead by your own example; your social skills and your coding skills will prove your right or wrong. And you don't even have to do all the coding yourself. With enough social skills you'll encourage others to join your project and you'll be able to focus on the usability issues you've identified. I'm wishing you all the best! > 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. Absolutely. And if you read through Emacs Wiki, you will in fact find some guidelines. I hope that they're subtle and not too invonvenient. I fear that what you have in mind will be a lot less inviting, but it will be up to you to try. > 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. (seehttp://xahlee.org/= emacs/xah_ban_emacs_irc.html) If i start to, as you > say, =93contribute=94 by editing of the article of removing conversations= , > 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. You are right on all accounts. You are controversial, banned, and editing other people's text needs lots of social skills. I'm afraid I cannot offer you any help on any of these topics. These are complex issues and have no easy answers. > 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. Well, we agree in that projects need leadership. But what you're in fact doing is saying that I am a project leader and I should lead my project differently. If I am not the project leader you think I am, then we're back to the previous point about your social skills. If I am in fact the project leader you think I am, then I'd argue that perhaps I am because of the way I decided to lead the project =96 chaning that policy will be tricky. Who knows, I might end up loosing my leadership position. That's also why forking is the easier answer. Note that this is very similar to how oral traditions work. In the area of martial arts and eastern schools of enlightenment, for example, we have an oral tradition. Some things are very difficult to express in words, which is why you cannot write it down. Thus there are no (good) books to learn it from, and you need a "master" to teach you. And the master's qualification is again given by his own master. Thus, knowledge is passed from master to apprentice. This necessitates the belief that you master is right and knows it all. It leads to ideas of a gold age when things were perfect, or of enlightened founders that had perfected a particular technique or school or thought. In this case, if you discover that you want to change something, there's no way of doing that within your own school. You will have to break away and create your own school. You effectively fork! That's why we have so many martial arts schools. Over fifty schools of Kung-Fu! And even rather recent things like Aikido have alreay splintered into different schools. Thus, oral traditions favor forking. Questions of social capital favor forking. But enough of this pseudo science. Back to the business at hand. You should fork the Emacs Wiki and try your ideas. If you fail, I hope you'll agree that I'm under no obligation to change either the tools I use, nor the way I run the project. Think about it this way. Assume that Emacs Wiki was run by a democracy. What would be the thing to do if you're unhappy? You start by writing about your unhappiness. And then you start a party. Collect people that will vote for you, assemble a team of people that can take over maintainership. Fortunately in the electronic world, we can try the new government before we kick out the old government. You can prove your worth before people need to choose. You'll agree that this is much better than what we have in our world of Realpolitik. > 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. I hope that all the time I've spent arguing with you has paid off at last and that you understand the reasons why I reject your two suggestions. Not only do I reject them for the reasons above, I also went above and beyond my social obligations in order to show you a way out of this impasse: There is a way for you to get the cake, and eat it too. > 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.) Sure. I just don't agree with your guidelines and that's that. See above for a way out. Good luck Alex PS: Why was this discussion crossposted to both g.e.help and c.emacs? It seems like a waste of bandwidth.