wiki discussion (was: wiki try at gnomesupport.org)

[Linas Vepstas]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 05:17:04PM +0200, Christian Stimming was heard to remark:
> Jon Lapham schrieb:
> >Christian Stimming wrote:
> >>
> >>http://gnomesupport.org/wiki/index.php/GnuCash

I'll see if I can post a link to this on gnucash.org shortly.

> >I'm a bit conflicted over whether I like the idea of a wiki or not.  On 
> >one hand, it is great in that people can easily contribute.  On the 
> >other hand, it is Yet Another Place for Documentation.
> >
> >I guess I can use the wiki as a place to harvest information to put in 
> >the documentation, kind of like what I do now with the user- mailing 
> >list archives, the devel- ML archives, the v1.6 docs, IRC, external 
> >HOWTOs, etc, etc, ....
> 
> Maybe we should make it very clear what the purpose of a gnucash wiki 
> page is. Maybe this should even be written in the beginning of that page.

Yes!

> In my opinion (and over the last months with the German wiki page 
> linuxwiki.de/GnuCash) the wiki is the place for "raw information 
> collection". It's not *discussion* since this is what mailing lists are 
> for, and it is not a "uber-sophisticated user documentation" since 
> that's what gnucash-docs is for. But IMHO it is the place where all the 
> FAQs and all the quickly-asked-and-answered issues should be 
> *collected*. If they turn out to be interesting to the general public, 
> they should be included in gnucash-docs subsequently.

This is a good, politically correct way to put it. Every wiki I've ever
visited was badly in need of an editor.  I've found them to be
random collections of poorly organized information which was often
wrong and self-contradictory.  It makes me want to say that 
no documentation is better than wrong documentation.

The job of a good editor is to organize the info in an orderly way,
and to remove the incorrect/contradictory information.   If there's such 
an editor policing the wiki, and/or converting it into formal
documentation, that's good.  If the wiki turns into a collection 
of erroneous opinions, that's bad.

--linas


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pub  1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas at linas.org>
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