Re: Guix wiki

[Attila Lendvai <attila@lendvai.name>]

> > There is something here:
> > https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix

[...]

> I was thrilled to see a wiki link on the homepage and disgusted to
> see that it didn't actually foster community. In fact, there's
> strife immediately within the "community" wiki, the simple fact it
> exists, let alone what it says. I think it would be better to have
> nothing linked from the homepage because 1) the current wiki is
> useless and 2) linking endorses what's there, including how it
> appears hostile to community.


FWIW, i had a similar experience when i came to Guix a few months ago:
i was thrilled that there was a wiki, and then i quickly got
disappointed that it's some shared something with little content
(which means that e.g. searching will bring up all kinds of unrelated
matches, etc).

i looked for the wiki because i wanted to add something useful to it
that i was searching for way too long, but then i ended up getting
dismayed and dropped the idea.

sending a patch to the manual is a way higher threshold than editing a
wiki, especially when it's someone's first contribution. and some
random, half-baked copy-paste doesn't belong in the manual, while it
may be very useful when found in a wiki using the search engine.

also note that i'm programming since i was a child, 30+ years now. at
least half of it was part of opensource projects, and yet i had quite
a learning curve getting to the point of submitting patches with any
level of confidence (but not yet comfort).

emails + debbugs + emacs + double-spaces + whatnot are all a cultural
thing, and not necessarily simple for aliens, not at all. if you want,
i can get into the details.

note that i'm not necessarily arguing for a wiki here, i understand
the concerns. i just want to draw attention that contributing to Guix,
and especially to the manual by a non-coder, is not at all as simple
as i see repeatedly expressed.

--
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
Copying is not theft, and coercively excluding other humans from using knowledge is evil.