[Nix-dev] Wiki is dead

[zimbatm]

Also we are not alone with the spam :)

[22:37] <zimbatm> alad: I forgot to ask, how do you guys fight against spam
on the wiki ?
[22:38] <alad> zimbatm: there was a recent spam wave, so we've restricted
mediawiki API access, add a more difficult captcha, and enabled some
extensions like spamregex

On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 at 22:42 zimbatm <zimbatm at zimbatm.com> wrote:

> Alright, let me know how I can help.
>
> Personally I am looking forward to much more scoped discussions like how
> to improve a specific page.
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 at 22:30 Rok Garbas <rok at garbas.si> wrote:
>
>> Hi Zimbatm and Peter,
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 1:41 PM, Peter Simons <simons at cryp.to> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Zimbatm,
>>>
>>>  > Is the consensus really to kill the wiki or is it just because it's
>>>  > in a bad state?
>>>
>>> I suppose Rok is our local kill-the-wiki champion who can give you the
>>> authoritative answer to this question, but FWIW my impression was that
>>> our Wiki is in a rather poor state. Yes, there is useful information in
>>> it, but unfortunately there is a lot of bad and/or outdated information,
>>> too, and that mixture seems to do more harm than good.
>>>
>>> Now, I don't believe that this kind of chaotic state is a necessary
>>> trait of wikis per-se. The Arch Linux Wiki, for example, is generally
>>> considered awesome and it contains a wealth of detailed technical
>>> information that -- unlike our wiki -- looks extremely polished and well
>>> maintained. So the underlying problem is clearly not the wiki format.
>>> The difference between NixOS and Arch Linux seems to be that some Arch
>>> enthusiast actually enjoy working on the wiki and spent time maintaining
>>> it, whereas NixOS developers apparently don't do that. Whatever the
>>> reasons are, the wiki gene appears to be underrepresented in our crowd.
>>>
>>> Several people have made various initiatives to help improving the wiki,
>>> but curiously enough none of those initiatives actually improved the
>>> *contents*. Nix contributors clearly enjoy making the wiki prettier,
>>> writing fancy CSS configurations, rendering the stuff in sophisticated
>>> web development environments from various markup languages, etc., but
>>> still despite all that effort put into the presentation and management
>>> of the content, the content itself invariably remains the same.
>>>
>>> Therefore, it is my perception that those initiatives will ultimately
>>> not result in a better wiki because changing the wiki infrastructure
>>> will not address the problem that we lack people who enjoy working on
>>> the contents.
>>>
>>
>> As Peter already mentioned (and also 2 mailing posts after this)
>> everybody worries about the tools.
>> what actually matters is the content and nobody is working on it.
>>
>> Current wiki content needs to be reviewed page by page and moved into
>> nixpkgs repository _alongside_ our manual.
>> That way we can actually start requesting updates to
>> tutorials/docs/manual/... as part of the pull requests.
>>
>> Of-course writing all above is easier then doing it.
>>
>> There are 546 wiki pages and in next days I will look into reviewing them
>> one by one, and for those I need input I will create a ticket and cc
>> interested parties to commend where/how should be (re)written.
>> Once initial review of the pages is done and tickets created, help will
>> be needed to review and improve the actual content.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Rok Garbas
>> http://www.garbas.si
>> rok at garbas.si
>> _______________________________________________
>> nix-dev mailing list
>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>
>
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