[gentoo-kbase] resurrected?

[Josh Saddler]

Right, so our fearless leader & kbase founder, Sven Vermuelen (SwifT)
has since retired from Gentoo. Now, even before he retired, we're all
well aware that kbase has hung in limbo. It hasn't really gone anywhere.

I still think kbase is a great idea. My chief concern is that it's too
soon. We're all very busy folks, and our other projects have been
occupying our time. There's even been a thread or two on the Gentoo
forums in which the user base indicates (in polls and responses) that
they don't even want a knowledgebase; they feel the existing
documentation is sufficient.

Given all that, is it worth keeping the project alive in some way? I
think that if we had the time, the technical resources
(frameworks/engines/search engines/etc.) kbase would be a very viable
project. However, there's no interest from the users, and very little
interest from the developers. We've no time or manpower to work on it,
and now our leader is gone as well!

I invite you all to consider the future of kbase -- if nothing else,
it's certainly something that can be started up on down the road, once
Gentoo and the community are ready for it.

That being said, for anyone who's still interested in it, I'm wondering
what your thoughts are on the kbase format. As previously discussed, we
intend to have a powerful search engine, so that users can type in a
term or two from their error message (or whatever) and find the doc that
takes them right to the problem. But, is this enough? Should we also
have some level of categorization, such as gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?

It'd be more work, but would adding HOWTOs/guides/troubleshooters to
certain categories also be a good idea? I imagine it would be more
specific than the 6 or so general categories in /doc/en/. Maybe kernel
troubles, booting, graphics/nvidia, database/mysql, and so on.

Thanks for your time. :)

- Josh