[Nix-dev] Regarding the Wiki

[Mateusz Czaplinski]

Being a beginner to Nix myself, I want to join in saying that as of now,
the wiki *is hugely helpful to me*. The manual(s) *do* have a lot of good
stuff and I like them very much, that's for sure, but the wiki totally does
too. And I can't really remember finding any advice there that would be
dated, I mean that it wouldn't work for me.

Specific examples of what I seem to remember being useful to me recently
(and I believe I came to all of those via Google):
- https://nixos.org/wiki/Installing_NixOS_from_a_USB_stick (the notes about
syslinux, I think; I'm not 100% sure if that was the wiki, but I remember I
was helped by some advice on how to use syslinux);
- https://nixos.org/wiki/Howto_find_a_package_in_NixOS (also the first time
I read about nox; have to try it yet);
- https://nixos.org/wiki/Network_Manager - this unfortunately I think I
*did not* find when struggling with how to use NetworkManager on my first
minimal install (answer: nmcli) -> that's also why I'm trying to contribute
the PR with declarative config for NM;
- https://nixos.org/wiki/Cheatsheet (by the way, this isn't even linked
from the main wiki page I think).

Thanks,
/Mateusz Czapliński.

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 2:47 AM, Jonathan Glines <auntieneo at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 2016-01-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Profpatsch <mail at profpatsch.de>:
> > We have basically decided to shut it down soon (™), right?
> >
> > Just now I tried to set up my printer again.
> > For that I first looked at docs and the source, which didn’t
> > provide any helpful info, and then I found the article on generating
> > the correct Cups files here: https://nixos.org/wiki/Printers
> >
> > If we dissolved the wiki, we would need to tranfer all that knowledge.
> > But should we all pack it into nixos-help?
>
> This is the first time I've heard this; I missed the thread where they
> decided to shut it down.
>
> It's somehow difficult to defend the wiki. It has a lot of dated
> information, some misinformation, and not enough editors. But the
> wiki's articles are mostly orthogonal to the official documentation.
> There's no way we can replace the wiki with official documentation.
> Here's what I mean:
>
> 1. When I started using NixOS, the manual mostly confused me. I
> Googled for "example nixos configurations" and wound up on the "Real
> World NixOS Dotfiles" on the wiki. That's a page that would never fit
> in the official NixOS documentation. A year later, someone (not me I
> swear) added my nixrc to that wiki page, and now I have over a dozen
> stars on my GitHub repository. Wow. Those people are crazy for
> thinking I know how to write configuration files, but I'm sure the
> examples on that wiki page help to inspire them like they did me.
>
> 2. The "Raspberry PI" article does not belong in the NixOS
> documentation until /after/ the Raspi build is working. But if nobody
> documents the progress, how will curious people experiment with it and
> get Raspi working? Scrape the mailing list? Scroll through the feature
> request on GitHub? Unlikely. It's a catch 22 problem without a wiki.
>
> 3. Random people documenting how they set up their laptop's weird
> hardware. Sure, some people have blogs. But not all of us have the
> time to maintain a blog. A wiki is a good place for those people to
> contribute.
>
> 4. Does anyone remember when Gentoo's wiki crashed, and the fallout
> effect it had on that community? I know our wiki is much smaller and
> probably not that significant, but if the NixOS userbase does grow,
> where will those users turn to? (Probably the Arch Wiki TBH)
>
> Incidentally, I contributed to the printer article you mentioned. I
> still don't know (after a year of using NixOS) how one would go about
> contributing to the official documentation. I feel it would be a shame
> for future NixOS users to lose that easy means to contribute. If new
> users are reluctant to contribute to the wiki, why should we expect
> them to contribute to the official documentation?
>
> The maintainers of the wiki are making a huge mistake trying to shut
> it down. The wiki as it is now is a tiny seed that reflects how small
> the NixOS community is right now. We should help it grow, probably by
> pruning the ugly bits (even linking them to the official docs). Please
> don't kill it.
>
> I'm really sorry for the rant...
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