Gentoo wiki [was: Re: [gentoo-user] NFS mounting - SOLVED]

[Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com>]

Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> writes:

> What does the team think can be done about it?

i'm not a Gentoo dev, merely someone who (a) has Strong Opinions 
about the need for good documentation, and (b) has contributed 
significantly to various FOSS docs, most recently the Gentoo 
wiki[a].

First and foremost, it's important to remember that, unlike some 
other distros (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu), Gentoo isn't backed by a 
corporation; the overwhelming majority of work is done by 
volunteers, who contribute if and when they can. This means that, 
even if people agree that a particular thing would be Good To 
Have, it's unlikely to happen unless there are people willing to 
commit to doing the work - and, critically, to maintaining it in 
an ongoing way. There's nothing compelling people to work on 
particular things. The wiki is no exception. i think it's fair to 
say that those of us who've regularly worked on the wiki are 
keenly aware of all the areas that need improvement, and of the 
fact that there's much more work that needs to be done than there 
are volunteers willing to take on the work.

Secondly, the wiki runs on MediaWiki, the software used by 
Wikipedia, so that provides some constraints on what's able to be 
done, or at least how easily something is able to be 
done. Something might be _possible_ to do, but require more work 
than people are willing to do. Or it might not. It can vary.

Thirdly, there are some aspects of presentation that are 
subjective enough that they lead to substantial bikeshedding if 
people's differing and reasonable preferences aren't taken into 
consideration. For example, there are many people who prefer dark 
themes, and have Strong Opinions about being forced to deal with 
light themes. i very much prefer light themes myself, and get 
cranky when forced to try to read Web sites that insist on dark 
themes - particularly when they're low-contrast, which is 
increasingly problematic for my aging eyes - so i can relate to 
people placed in the opposite situation. What that means is that 
design changes can't be assumed to be happening in _only_ a light 
theme context, or a dark theme context. Nor can it be assumed that 
the wiki will always be viewed on a desktop device, rather e.g. a 
phone - indeed, people might be using their phone to access the 
wiki because they've broken their desktop system and are trying to 
work out how to fix it. :-)

Finally, i'd like to suggest that you open an issue on 
bugs.gentoo.org, under the "Websites" -> "Wiki" component, with 
your thoughts and suggestions, because that's much more likely to 
be seen by the relevant people:

  https://bugs.gentoo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Websites


Alexis.

[a] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Flexibeast