I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.
First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only me?) think it might.
But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not sure yet.
Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt anything anyway.
Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki might work? If so, I should do that in my own.
Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are interested in development and administration, I would
like
to participate in meta.
The best place for discussion of development and
administration, the
technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.
What about the rest of stuff? Like documentation, testing, bug reports and so on. Sourceforge?
I understand CVS seems better than wiki. Does anyone give the opinion that the bug reports system of sourceforge is better than meta-wikipedia. If I remember, there is none. I would like to move bug reports in sourceforge to meta-wiki (gradually). Objections?
I probably am going to post more detailed documents to meta- wikipedia. (and hopefully more people will help documentation)
I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do to encourage more people to partipicate development?
On Fre, 2003-01-31 at 17:29, Takuya Murata wrote:
Wiki instead of CVS:
Why don't we try?
Because it doesn't work. CVS is a lot more than just an editing system. Please familiarize yourself with it before suggesting this yet another time: http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/cvs.html
I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do to encourage more people to partipicate development?
Generally, give higher exposure to the open source side of Wikipedia. Most people who come to the Wikipedia project simply don't do so from a software development perspective, so we need to highlight more that this side exists as well.
We need to make the Wikipedia-code Wikipedia-independent. This isn't very hard, but some stuff needs to be fixed before Wikipedia can really be recommended as a general wiki, especially in the interlanguage links department (fortunately for us, most other wikis don't have multilanguage support at all).
The fact that with OpenFacts there will soon be another Wikipedia specifically for open source documentation should also help in attracting new developers.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
We need to make the Wikipedia-code Wikipedia-independent. This isn't very hard, but some stuff needs to be fixed before Wikipedia can really be recommended as a general wiki, especially in the interlanguage links department (fortunately for us, most other wikis don't have multilanguage support at all).
Which reminds me of the "Sifter" project. I put some software together for that project, stealing rendering source from the wikipedia software. But, with TeX support and other things to follow, this will become impossible to maintain.
So, when we talk of making the wikipedia software more general (and faster, of course;-), is anyone opposed to throw in some *possible* restrictions for, say, editing, uploading etc.? They'll be off by default, so wikipedia won't change a bit, but we could use the same code with a few changed variables for the Sifter.
Magnus
So, when we talk of making the wikipedia software more general (and faster, of course;-), is anyone opposed to throw in some *possible* restrictions for, say, editing, uploading etc.? They'll be off by default, so wikipedia won't change a bit, but we could use the same code with a few changed variables for the Sifter.
No objections - just a few more "if($wgSomeGlobalVar)"s I guess. But perhaps you could post a more detailed proposal of what you want to change and how.
Also, I still think that a well-integrated, generalized group certification system makes more sense than a separate filter project.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
No objections - just a few more "if($wgSomeGlobalVar)"s I guess. But perhaps you could post a more detailed proposal of what you want to change and how.
I didn't work the details myself yet - actually, I'm still fighting with my latest Linux installation ;-)
Also, I still think that a well-integrated, generalized group certification system makes more sense than a separate filter project.
We could do both in the same code, then set up both as different projects, and wait what happens. Nobody expected what happened to Nupedia and Wikipedia.
Magnus
Takuya Murata wrote:
I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.
First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only me?) think it might.
But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not sure yet.
Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt anything anyway.
Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki might work? If so, I should do that in my own.
There is no benifit from using a wiki to develop software. There are only cons:
1) There is no "barrier" so everybody who has read a 2 hour tutorial on PHP can just start editing, which will help nobody. 2) Versions of articles (or source code files) are only linear, and there is no connection between distinct files (their versions). 3) It encourages small edits which lead to choas. 4) Think about an edit war on source files. That´s rediculous. 5) You can´t run/compile etc. it. You can´t edit it offline or with an appropriate editor. You can´t use any tools. 6) all the things I forgot
To sum it up: There will be a chaos in versions, small changes which don´t fit together and lose the view for the large picture, you can´t use editors, run it, use tools ... at best the software will be hacked (in the worst sense) together trash which somehow manages to run.
A wiki might be the right thing for geniouses: Ah, he did that change, that was because of this and that, it leads to that and this, now put it toghether with my ideas, ... If anybody who could handle that exists, he would do just fine with CVS/sourceforge.
Hope this is not to harsh :)
Flo
If I'm not mistaken, it is totally within YOUR power to get the source code from CVS and import it into (Meta?) Wikipedia somewhere. I don't think it's a good idea, but it is possible for you to do. I think that, if you were to perform this exercise, you would see that wiki isn't very well suited for source code modification/viewing.
I understand that you want to see if it works. That's perfectly reasonable. However, you are asking other volunteers, who are already busy with other important things, to do something that, for the most part, they are not willing to do.
Jason Richey
Takuya Murata wrote:
I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.
First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only me?) think it might.
But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not sure yet.
Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt anything anyway.
Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki might work? If so, I should do that in my own.
Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are interested in development and administration, I would
like
to participate in meta.
The best place for discussion of development and
administration, the
technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.
What about the rest of stuff? Like documentation, testing, bug reports and so on. Sourceforge?
I understand CVS seems better than wiki. Does anyone give the opinion that the bug reports system of sourceforge is better than meta-wikipedia. If I remember, there is none. I would like to move bug reports in sourceforge to meta-wiki (gradually). Objections?
I probably am going to post more detailed documents to meta- wikipedia. (and hopefully more people will help documentation)
I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do to encourage more people to partipicate development? _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Jason Richey wrote:
If I'm not mistaken, it is totally within YOUR power to get the source code from CVS and import it into (Meta?) Wikipedia somewhere. I don't think it's a good idea, but it is possible for you to do. I think that, if you were to perform this exercise, you would see that wiki isn't very well suited for source code modification/viewing.
I understand that you want to see if it works. That's perfectly reasonable. However, you are asking other volunteers, who are already busy with other important things, to do something that, for the most part, they are not willing to do.
Jason Richey
Dear Wikipedia-developers/maintainers,
I am right at this moment writing such a piece of code in C, just as an excercise to see if it works and how it 'feels'. I'll let this list (and especially Takuya Murata) know when I've finished it, to come and have a look.
Thanks for creating/maintaining Wikipedia!, Pieter Suuromd
Takuya Murata wrote:
I don't aim to discuss which one is better CVS or wiki.
First of all, again I am not so sure developing in wiki works. Some think it won't work and some (including me, only me?) think it might.
But think of the reality. Don't we need better mechanism for development? Wiki might not work I know that. But I am not sure yet.
Why don't we try? Is there any technical trouble to publish wikipedia software sourcecode? It seems to me that it is possible to publish sourcecode and some sysops apply them regularly. If it didn't yield good result, it doesn't hurt anything anyway.
Oh, maybe am I only one who believes development in wiki might work? If so, I should do that in my own.
Probably. If meta is the place only for those who are interested in development and administration, I would
like
to participate in meta.
The best place for discussion of development and
administration, the
technical aspects, is right here on wikitech-l.
What about the rest of stuff? Like documentation, testing, bug reports and so on. Sourceforge?
I understand CVS seems better than wiki. Does anyone give the opinion that the bug reports system of sourceforge is better than meta-wikipedia. If I remember, there is none. I would like to move bug reports in sourceforge to meta-wiki (gradually). Objections?
I probably am going to post more detailed documents to meta- wikipedia. (and hopefully more people will help documentation)
I know my proposal is not good enough, what else we can do to encourage more people to partipicate development? _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-- "Jason C. Richey" jasonr@bomis.com
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