[Nix-dev] wiki and utf-8 characters

[Nicolas Pierron]

Hi,

I want to mention:

*** Not everybody is a developer ***

Even if this sounds wrong for some persons on this mailing list, don't
forget that we should lower the barrier of edition, especially on the
wiki more than anywhere else.  In my opinion the login process of the
current wiki is already too much.

* The greatest wiki should provide the ability to have WYSIWYG
anonymous contributions online.

I agree, this sounds crazy, but one can limit the number of anonymous
contributions to typos.  This is often the most valuable
contributions, as they prevent people from judging the wiki on
something irrelevant from the subject addressed in the wiki page.

Providing this on top of git is doable, the hosting server should
provide an anonymous user account on which we can add a commit hooks
to restrict the amount of modifications.

Github also provides a "Zen Mode" for editing files on-line.  This is
not yet a WYSIWYG and it need authentification, but this is another
way to make modifications.

Protecting the account creation with an htaccess is a terrible idea,
as this break the concept of being able to edit things easily.

* Getting an identity on the wiki should be easy.

To get more content, we should use a simple login system.  Currently
the simplest login system I know is Persona[1], or OpenID, others are
tied to accounts such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
This way we avoid storing password on the server, only an email
address which can also be used for authoring wiki documentation.

* Moderation / Review

Multiple people complain about spam on the wiki, and I am among them,
as I subscribed to the rss feed of the wiki.  Having a review process
to go over large contributions would be nice, before somebody can be
vouched access to the documentation.


Just as a reminder, not everybody is a developer, and the wiki is a
way for people who are not familiar with the code to contribute to Nix
/ Nixpkgs / NixOS.  We should not neglect our choices as this is
shaping the future of our projects.

Personally, I don't think Github is the best solution, it is one
solution which is good for developers but a bit harder for others.

[1] http://labs.newsint.co.uk/blog/2012/10/why-mozilla-persona-is-the-right-answer-to-the-question-of-identity/

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/