Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ed W <lists@××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] an official Gentoo wiki
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:27:26
Message-Id: 4C0CE5A4.6080801@wildgooses.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] an official Gentoo wiki by Ben de Groot
1 On 05/04/2010 03:43, Ben de Groot wrote:
2 > On 5 April 2010 03:13, Joshua Saddler<nightmorph@g.o> wrote:
3 >
4 >> Let the renderer take care of the final rendering, as really, tags and markup are all arbitrary. What should matter is how it appears in your webbrowser, since that'll vary from the source view anyways.
5 >>
6 > So why are you such a staunch defender of GuideXML then? If markup is
7 > arbitrary really, then why not allow people to use what is convenient?
8 >
9 >
10
11 I do think arguing about the syntax is the wrong target (as I think you
12 agree above).
13
14 The magic of a wiki is:
15
16 - Focus on the text and not on the formatting
17 - Goal of simplicity to bang in a bunch of content without needing to
18 worry about formatting
19 - Granularity of edits, eg edit a single word and not get overwritten by
20 another change which edits a different single word
21 - Web based editing from any machine without installing stuff
22 - Extremely low barriers to contributing
23
24 I think these goals could be satisfied by a decent system around
25 GuideXML as much as from an arbitrary Wiki engine?
26
27 The real magic is in getting lots of users to start contributing and
28 that largely comes from having very few barriers to contributing.
29
30 If you remember the original Wikipedia it involved requiring to pass
31 some tests to become a contributor and it was basically a closed editor
32 system. It failed dismally... The revamped wikipedia allowed anyone to
33 edit and whilst we can debate the merits of the final product, it's
34 certainly been popular. So I claim that low barriers to entry and ease
35 of editing is the real target - the markup is important, but definitely
36 secondary to the engine itself
37
38
39 Good luck
40
41 Ed W