Re: [gentoo-user] Is gentoo-portage and gentoo-wiki offline?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 18 October 2008 23:31:56 kashani wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Friday 17 October 2008 23:27:44 RYAN vAN GINNEKEN wrote:
> >> heehee have been wanting to get onboard with gentoo for a while now how
> >> ironic that the wiki site i was so looking forward to using is down the
> >> same day my gentoo box is up heehee.
> >
> > Let's see, how shall I put this? Oh stuff it, might as well be honest.
> >
> > gentoo-wiki.com is notorious for being up and down more often than you
> > change your underwear. It's also been compromised at least twice in the
> > last 12 months. The home page was last updated so long ago I'm no longer
> > sure if it was still in this millenniume.
>
> As the fellow who maintains the Bind and Postfix w/PostfixAdmin how-tos
> on the wiki I take a small amount of umbrage with the above statements.
>
> :-) Also my Bind how-to was added to the front page after I updated it
>
> in July.

It would be entirely unreasonable of me to say that because I think the 
overall quality of the wiki is low that therefore every document in it is 
just as poor. You just proved that :-)

I maintain the wiki at work which serves the entire company (1000+ employees). 
My team has our own section, which is well maintained. 50% of the other 
sections are of appalling quality. So I too know what it's like.

> 	I generally try to update the docs with recent packages every six
> months or so though I am guilty of letting them sit a bit longer.
> However Gentoo has no official Bind documentation. The official Gentoo
> Virtual Mail how-to offers about half the functionality, explanation,
> and troubleshooting info in my doc. Also the Gentoo virtual mail server
> has remained essentially unchanged in the last six years whereas my doc
> has continued to change and improve. And while we're being honest my
> virtual server build kicks the crap out of the official one in just
> about every way.

Well that's a very useful contribution and deserves thanks. Unfortunately for 
me, I have no need to read them. I don't need domain or mail servers (never 
mind virtual mail) at home, and at work we use Postfix for mail, bind for the 
authoritative domain servers and cns for the caches - all on FreeBSD
>
> 	I won't say that all docs on gentoo-wiki are of this quality or better
> than the Gentoo docs, but you will be missing out on some genuinely
> useful information by dismissing the gentoo-wiki out of hand.

Therein lies the rub. The OP stated upfront that he is new to Gentoo. The 
chances of him being able to find the gems amongst the chaff are reduced. 
Better to advise him to stay away until he is in a position to evaluate these 
things. If he's in that position right now, then he deserves to know what the 
overall quality is.

> 	In regards to the soon to be asked "why not update the Gentoo docs if
> you're so darn smart" question going through a number of heads. In real
> life I manage just over 7000 servers as part of a larger group and am
> directly responsible for a bit over 1500 of them. I can devote an hour
> or two every couple of months to updating my home Gentoo box and fixing
> my wiki entries or I can fight with Guide XML for three or four hours
> and generally produce nothing useful.

1500? And here was me thinking I was in good shape looking after a mere 125...

For the record, it's grossly unfair for others to *expect* you to update the 
official docs just because you know the subject. "why not update the Gentoo 
docs if you're so darn smart" is likely to produce "stuff off!" responses. 
Much better for people to ask nicely, say please, and be cool with the answer



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com