Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Reducing use of SMW in favor of something sane

[William Hubbs]

On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 01:02:55PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> TL;DR: MediaWiki sucks, SMW even more; let's start moving important
> stuff out of it and into something sane. What replacements do you
> suggest?
>
>
> There was a long period during which we've attempted to move a lot of
> Gentoo out of fancy XML files and into Wiki. This happened for project
> docs, this happened for entire project structure and more more stuff.
> On the other hand devmanual is still using fancy XML files in its own
> git repository, and the main g.o site is using Jekyll.
>
> Now that the main SMW proponent is MIA, I think it's time we look back
> and think whether what has happened over time was good. I think it
> wasn't, and I have a number of arguments to support that:
>
> 1. SMW lacks proper review platform, and the workflow is not suitable
> for project docs.
>
> 2. It has a pretty high entry barrier, and is poorly documented.
>
> 3. Preview is half-working, and insufficient for more complex work.
>
> 4. It lacks proper offline editing capabilities.
>
> 5. The watching (mail notifications) are awfully cumbersome.
>
> 6. It is slow.
>

7. Related to the high entry barrier, it has an even higher entry
barrier for accessibility. Editing documentation in a browser is unwieldy
at best and impossible at worst.

I looked at the git mediawiki module as an alternative, but it is
extremely unwieldy as well and would put a lot of load on the server.

I, too, realize that it would take a lot of time and effort, but I would
definitely support migrating *all* of our documentation out of mw into some kind
of flat files (rst? markdown? some other format?) which could be
edited/previewed locally and rendered on the web easily.

William