Re: [gentoo-dev] About blogs & wikis

[Xavier Neys]

Corey Shields wrote:
> On Tuesday 17 August 2004 06:23 pm, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard wrote:
>
>>>Okay, I wasn't aware of that, but I haven't actually visited
>>>gentoo-wiki.com either.  Regardless of the state of that particular
>>>wiki, I think a wiki would simply be more useful than a weblog, since a
>>>wiki allows for greater flexibility generally.  It might make sense to
>>>make parts of it or all of it writable only by developers.  I think
>>>allowing users to modify parts of it would be advantageous though, since
>>>it would provide a better home for the sort of tutorials currently found
>>>in the forums.
>
> I really can't support an official wiki.

An «official wiki» ? Isn't that a contradiction in itself?

> If our current method of
> documentation and support totally sucked then it would be a different story,
> but we are known for excellent documentation, and there is a system of checks
> and balances in the documentation process that you just don't get from a
> wiki.  Otherwise, you end up with phrases like "While most poeple use would
> use this : "  which makes no sense (taken from the first page I visited at
> the above url).  I feel that a wiki would be taking a step backwards..

I dont think it was suggested the current docs should be replaced by a wiki, 
that would indeed be a major step backwards.

> If there is a piece of documentation that someone has written and feels it
> should be included, by all means, post it to bugs.gentoo.org.  While I can't
> speak for them, I'm pretty sure that the documentation team would love the
> contribution.

A wiki would be much more handy than the forums for user-contributed docs. 
IMHO it would allow more users to find what they need, more users to share 
their knowledge and eventually allow the docdevs to integrate that knowledge 
into the current docs or create new ones.
Writing docs about things the author knows is useful, writing docs about 
things users don't know is even better. A wiki would let us assess the latter 
in a better way.


And now, something completely different, blogs.

    On the one hand, if I ever wanted to post my own personal blog, I would 
definitely *not* host it on Gentoo so it can be _personal_, i.e. I could write 
anything I want any way I like without embarrassing, implicating or causing 
any liability to Gentoo.
Wouldn't a planet be a good choice? Given devs, or anybody else, do not really 
need Gentoo to publish a blog in the first place, why not show us the blogs 
first? The main problem now is we don't know where the blogs are. A planet 
would give them visibility, Gentoo would keep the choice of which blogs are 
'planeted' (just in case) and it would not require too much resources, hopefully.
    On the other hand, I would be very interested in official *project blogs*. 
Some teams post a status page once in a while, some might not. A project blog 
would be more dynamic and wouldn't require status page writers to keep tabs. 
See it as a way of publishing all sorts of little bits of information that are 
not big enough to make it to our home page.
Besides, a planet of those blogs would give a neat overview of everything that 
is happening within Gentoo.


My 0,02€
-- 
/  Xavier Neys
\_ Gentoo Documentation Project
/  French & Internationalisation Lead
\  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en
/\