[POLL closed] Should we move to closed wikis ---no is the answer

[aus9]

voting now locked the trend is clear!


Recently I posted on another thread, which I won't hijack any further

curaga
Quote
That is a 486-class cpu, and our current gcc contains instructions for 586 or 686

Does that mean our wiki for creating instructions is now out-of-date for the 486 bit?

Quote
export CFLAGS="-march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe"
export CXXFLAGS="-march=i486 -mtune=i686 -Os -pipe"
export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"

if so I am happy to edit but not yet skilled enough to know the answer.

and bmarkus replied with

"if so I am happy to edit but not yet skilled enough to know the answer."

Why do you want to edit something what you do not know?
 

I sent a pm, not wishing to sidetrack that thread any further, but as he is a moderator he has given me permission to post on the forum (he does not take responsibility for my words or where I post etc)

Therefore I offer the following short history of the extensions wiki

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,14261.msg80445.html#msg80445

If you don't want to read it, it says this......the wiki was wrong and misleading. I spotted it and reported it. And another moderator suggested I change it. Later on I added some more changes including a license condition from a post by bmarkus I found, which I agree with BTW

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,14083.0.html

------------------------------------------------------------

Merits of closed versus open wiki begins from my point of view
__________________________________________________-

Closed wikis means moderators have to approve the content of the pages submitted or editted OR
approve the login name and password of a selected group.....we will call them experts

Open wikis means open slather.
This means anyone can make mistakes in such wikis and unless spotted by an expert remain to corrupt etc

-----------------------------------------

1)  I believe that if bmarkus is correct, he showed an icon of displeasure at my above proposal, that:
only experts should create, edit wikis
2) I counter that whoever created ---or made the final changes that I read---for the extensions wiki, was not an expert.
But a non-expert = me spotted it and offered to change it
But I did so by alerting the forum of my changes

SIDETRACK  This brings up the main problem with all volunteer linux forums. We are all volunteers here.

If we keep open wikis some expert may need to monitor important wikis

As I am biased towards open wiki and biased on my importance and (good looks) it may be better I raise a poll?

[Rich]

Hi aus9
I believe we should stick with a Wiki that is open to all who wish to contribute.

Closed wikis means moderators have to approve the content of the pages submitted or editted OR
approve the login name and password of a selected group.....we will call them experts

I would call that picking who is worthy and who is not, which is a good way to alienate people. What I like about
this community is that all are welcome to contribute and express their ideas. Restricting the Wiki goes against
this principle, and while mistakes may creep in, the open nature of the Wiki makes them easy to correct.
While one person may be able to provide technical information for the Wiki, another may be more adept at
presenting that information in a way that is easy to understand, two skill sets that compliment each other.

[bmarkus]

By definition WIKI is an open collaboration tool. There are no resources to add a moderation or approval level. My concern is that I have seen articles distroyed due to false changes, etc. Also, you can not control stype, structure, etc.

WIKI is a great tool, but can't replace a proper documentation set. This is the weekest part of Tiny Core Linux. I know, to be a good technical writer requires a different skill set than make software.

To make an article is one thing and to maintain it another. Core is changing fast (I have the feeling time to time too fast) and not easy to be up to date even if you are using it.

Anyhow, I do not see reason to restrict WIKI.

[aus9]

Thanks for your replies.

a Suggestion for wikis that new members are to agree to, could be:

I agree to do a wiki without also doing a courtesy pm to the maintainer of that TCZ
I agree to seek approval before edit of a system or important wiki.

hmm, the last one, on reflection may lead to wiki writers drying up I mean being reduced. But we don't have a lot of wiki writers so thats not going to change much in the long run....IMHO

[spence91]

I'm with Bmarkus - Tinycore is changing quite quickly - and writing documentation is a pain.

To shamelessly steal a line from wikipedia: "Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages."

I agree with this. I'm not sure if there's a benefit in making it more difficult for users to contribute.

[coreplayer2]

I hope someone maintains a backup..

[Lee]

Is anyone using the "My Talk" pages on the wiki?

This appears to be a personal wiki page for each user.  Seems like this would be a great place to post articles in the vein of "Here's how I do <whatever>" as distinct "Here's the official Core way to do <whatever>"

I've set the "web site url" link on my forum profile to point to http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:user:lee  - though there isn't anything particularly interesting there yet.

[althalus]

I hope someone maintains a backup..

Wikis in general keep a version history, so if somebody screws up a page (spambot, bad formatting, blatantly wrong info, whatever) it's pretty easy to restore a previous version of that page.




It would seem to me, that the most reasonable answer to the original problem, would be to enforce a style guide, and put someone in "charge" of the wiki (ie, a cheif editor, or some such, who helps make sure edits follow the style guide, fixes bad english, and knows enough about tinycore and linux in general to notice when some piece of content is just flat out wrong, etc).

[tinypoodle]

1. I can't really understand all this discussion here as long as the Talk/Discussion pages for each wiki page have remained largely unused so far...

2. There are users contributing only to one or two out of wiki, forums and IRC channel.

[aus9]

voting now locked, the trend is clear!

thank you for your considered comments and votes