Re: [Fwd: Re: really attracting developers]

[MJ Ray]

"Nikolaus Waxweiler" <madleser@gmx.de>
> What do you have in mind for which the wiki is suboptimal?

For example, the applications database, the automated documentation and
pretty much anything that's more structured than a text file.  Wikis can
be bodged into doing those jobs, but that's not optimal.

> Projects like  
> Etoile and Beep Media Player use a wiki as their homepage and  
> http://amarok.kde.org is mainly a front-end to it.

Etoile has not released yet, I don't know Beep and http://amarok.kde.org/
looks confusing and hard to read here.

> And as I already said earlier, the spamming can be limited. Yes, there's  
> the issue of defacement, but it won't happen that often if the software is  
> kept up to date.

'spamming can be limited' = can't be avoided?

'if the software is kept up to date' - but can we keep the software
up to date?

> Also, the wiki activity probably amounts to more than  
> what the current homepage has seen recently.

Agreed, but I think that's more down to misdirection by posters to
this list suggesting that the wiki will be the main site; and that
the limited access for most people to the non-wiki-website is almost
as frustrating as access to the wiki site is for me.  (The wiki is
broken as it does not allow me to log in, seems to require cookies
but doesn't document that or support p3p, doesn't allow offline
working, and so on...)

IMO, the biggest problem of the wiki is bitrot - if no-one has time soon
to do the big updates of www that it needs, it sits there.  But if no-one
has time to do the big update of mediawiki that it needs, someone breaks
in and announces the closure of the project :-/

[...]
> > [...] If you can get it published in the community press,
> > then that also helps to introduce new people to GNUstep.  Please email
> > link suggestions to webmasters@gnustep.org
[...]
> New people are turned off by old and/or incomplete information. Besides,  
> texinfo isn't the best format for linking to relevant information  
> somewhere else, something a wiki does [[better]].

What word have you redacted with [[better]]?  Are you quoting something?

Really, posting guides to gnustep.org (except as archive copies) is
a poor substitute for getting articles about gnustep out there in the
wider world.  I'm puzzled why you think it should force the whole web
site into using a wiki.

Regards,
-- 
MJR