On 9/21/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How few pages would I need to encompass the whole
beast that is
the policies, practises and implemented MediaWiki software features?
That is if I took the time and effort to commit the present state of them to
a fixed format, such as a "beach-reading" ready computer printout
from an old matrix printer, 80 columns, 36 or so lines (the old 2000
characters per page, or so, format)?
A second question. Is there a list which pages I should print out to
have in my hands that immensely valuable, but essentially ephemeral
object? (it really goes without saying that the reference work would
stay current all of minutes or less)
I am carefully not broaching the subject of what I would have to do
to comply with the GFDL. That doesn't really interest me at all, or
perhaps to put it differently, taht would be a beast of a totally
different colour, and is welcome to stay within its own worm-can.
How detailed do you want it to be? I mean, do you want to print out
the entire text of each policy, or is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies enough?
Same with the help-files, most features can be summed up in a
sentence, but if you want every single detail of how they work, it's
going to be much longer. Take images, I can teach you in two seconds
how to insert an image but [[Help:Images and other uploaded files]] is
the length of a short novella.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I was thinking about a *complete*
reference, of the type that would be considered definitive, if our
(english language wikipedia) policies, practises, and software
features implemented, weren't a moving target (as they very palpably
are).
The argument about what a "short" wikipedia guides length would
be is too close to an argument about how long a piece of string is...
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]