Hello all,
I've been working on the wiki recently and noticed that a lot of out-of-date or redundant information is retained. For example, completed tasks on to-do lists are checked off and never removed. Isthere an unofficial policy of not deleting info, even if it may exist elsewhere (in the git repo history, wikipage revision history, etc)? Other instances might be stubs dedicated to features in development years ago, or pages on bugs that have already been fixed or triaged in Bugzilla.I know even page deletions can still be reverted, but I wanted to check first before cleaning things out more aggressively. If there are a few unwritten rules everyone likes the wiki to follow, I could add them somewhere as editing guidelines.
While the topic's up, I was also wondering how moinmoin was chosen as the wiki engine. I couldn't really find a discussion on the mailing lists so I figured it was the best option when the wiki was first started. I can appreciate that it doesn't require a database and it's written in python instead of php. Allowing only inline CSS in tables causes some headaches, but mainly it can be really slow sometimes, especially when editing, and unless using wikilinks or going directly to a page, navigation is tricky. Has the possibility of migrating the wiki to a different engine ever come up? Or does the Wine wiki code just need some tweaking and maybe some tools? To be honest, I don't know if there is a better alternative (MediaWiki is designed for a very different use case and has really messy code). It just seems like something is discouraging even basic upkeep on the wiki, which kind of defeats its whole purpose. -Kyle
On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Kyle Auble randomidman48@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello all,
I've been working on the wiki recently and noticed that a lot of out-of-date or redundant information is retained. For example, completed tasks on to-do lists are checked off and never removed. Isthere an unofficial policy of not deleting info, even if it may exist elsewhere (in the git repo history, wikipage revision history, etc)? Other instances might be stubs dedicated to features in development years ago, or pages on bugs that have already been fixed or triaged in Bugzilla.I know even page deletions can still be reverted, but I wanted to check first before cleaning things out more aggressively. If there are a few unwritten rules everyone likes the wiki to follow, I could add them somewhere as editing guidelines.
The wiki tends to have some bit rot, and if you're willing to keep it clean, then I'd say you get more leeway in the editing guidelines. In general though, yes, old info should be updated/removed. Old taskslists, it's a bit more dependent. For instance, the 1.0 / 1.2 / 1.4 task lists are probably useful for old reference, but others could possibly go (may need some examples though).
While the topic's up, I was also wondering how moinmoin was chosen as the wiki engine. I couldn't really find a discussion on the mailing lists so I figured it was the best option when the wiki was first started. I can appreciate that it doesn't require a database and it's written in python instead of php. Allowing only inline CSS in tables causes some headaches, but mainly it can be really slow sometimes, especially when editing, and unless using wikilinks or going directly to a page, navigation is tricky. Has the possibility of migrating the wiki to a different engine ever come up? Or does the Wine wiki code just need some tweaking and maybe some tools? To be honest, I don't know if there is a better alternative (MediaWiki is designed for a very different use case and has really messy code). It just seems like something is discouraging even basic upkeep on the wiki, which kind of defeats its whole purpose.-Kyle
Dimi Paun (CC'ed) set up/runs the wiki, so he'd be the guy to ask. Other people have discussed MoinMoin/alternatives before, but to my knowledge, there hasn't been much effort put into changing it.
On Friday, July 6, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Austin English wrote:
Dimi Paun (CC'ed) set up/runs the wiki, so he'd be the guy to ask. Other people have discussed MoinMoin/alternatives before, but to my knowledge, there hasn't been much effort put into changing it.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've looked into the moinmoin code a little more, and Dimi already switched out the cgi module. Besides possibly updating to a newer version and adding Xapian search, there may not be much more that can be done on the software end.
Ubuntu wiki is fast and it apparently uses moinmoin so it could just be server resources too. If that's the case then moinmoin is probably still the best choice: uses python, no database required, customizable, and it seems to be the main alternative to MediaWiki.
On a side note, is there any talk of moving the wiki code from the sourceforge CVS repo to a Git one at WineHQ someday?
-Kyle
P.S. Sorry about the word-wrapping in my last email. Yahoo zigged when I thought it would zag.
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Austin English -
Kyle Auble