[Mediawiki-l] Any leads on a basic wiki setup-and-configure instruction manual?

[Michael Daly]

Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C] wrote:

> As the system gets used more and
> then becomes a critical piece of infrastructure, management gets
> worried, what of he leaves?  They demand documentation, the programmer
> laughs.  "Its self documented!". 

Anyone who's worked in the IT business for more than a few years has 
likely seen this.  Management is at fault for not making documentation 
mandatory and for allowing themselves to be so dependent on one 
programmer to this degree.

However, in the real world, management is never going to fund the 
documentation effort and the backup staff.  They are not going to take a 
project that is inevitably late and over budget and spring for the extra 
time & $$$ to get the documentation done.

> Documentation MUST be part of any system that is to be used by anyone
> other than the developer.  It must be readable and complete. 

I agree.  I fought that battle for decades.  However, it just doesn't 
happen in a world run by petty spreadsheet pushers disguised as senior 
management.  It's less likely to be done in a world of volunteer effort 
where coding produces instant gratification and documentation is a drudge.

Nerds as a group have poorer communication skills than the general 
population.  You're fighting an uphill battle just to get them to learn 
how to write proper English.  I looked at some of the Apache code 
recently, trying to understand how some undocumented feature worked. 
The code was filled with variable names like:  r, s, t...  "Self 
documented"?  Yeah, right.  They can't write, they can't type and they 
can't spell.  Hence, they produce write-once code that no one else will 
understand without considerable effort.

One of the most abominable code standards that results in unreadable 
code is the product of one Charles Simonyi (formerly of Microsoft).  His 
coding standards in MS software are crap.  He is currently a paying 
passenger on the Space Station.  You don't get paid for real quality in 
the computer business.  But some get paid billions.

Mike