[RULE] Why we don't have a wiki, was: Who wants to write articles on RULE?

[M. Fioretti]

On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 14:40:05 PM -0400, Billy Tallis
(wtallis at gmail.com) wrote: 
> > On Sat, 2005-04-02 at 00:02 +0200, M. Fioretti wrote:
> > > Therefore, if you feel like making some little bucks helping RULE, and
> > > have the satisfaction of being published by LJ, this is the right
> > > time, since they seem interested.
[...] 

> This may be a little OT, but why don't we have a wiki for
> documentation? That would seem to help a little since it seems
> people (myself included) only have pieces of knowledge.

Fair question. There are several reasons:

0) This will probably surprise many but I (Marco) am not particularly
   fond of wikis. Specifically, at least for small projects like this,
   I like much more the idea of a structured approach were there is an
   organic (predefined and common) layout of what must be written and
   how it fits in the whole, than a semi-random conglomerate of
   possibly unrelated pieces. I'm not saying that the website is like
   this *today*, I know it isn't but I preferred, and still prefer the
   first way best.

1) I am also a bit paranoid about somebody placing insults, trolling
   and what not thanks to a wiki, and it laying there for weeks
   because we are very few and could not patrol the website 24/7. I
   know there are wikis with access privilege, but  having doubt 0) in
   the background, I never bothered to check it out seriously

2) We DID have a wiki at the beginning of the project, and it laid
   there almost empty for months.

3) about one year ago I asked other members to investigate and install
   some CMS system to rebuild the site, and the choice (thanks again
   to C.D. Rigby for his work on this) was for SPIP.

4) SPIP allows for co-editors, and I have invited several times
   whoever can contribute to ask for a login. Two or three people have
   editor accounts so far, but have never used it yet. The invitation
   is still valid, of course!

5) The spip markup syntax is very simple, not more complicated than a
   wiki, and I have also invited everybody interested to just post
   content here or to me directly to have reviewed by the list and
   then uploaded by me or some other editor. This too remains an open
   option. Download whatever page you see on www.rule-project.org,
   post it here edited, and it will be reviewed and uploaded, giving
   credit as needed. Ditto for any completely new page you feel
   necessary.

So, in a nutshell, the "responsibility" for not having a wiki today is
mine, but it doesn't seem to have made any real difference in terms of
contributions to the website so far, so there seems to be no reasons
to re-install something else instead of improving/filling/updating the
current documentation structure.

Any comment is welcome.

    Ciao,
    Marco

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory      http://www.rule-project.org/

"To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110
million is inevitable"                           -- Edgar Bronfman

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