Improving the Wiki

[jcc7]

In article <e3ae4v$2o1t$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Bruno Medeiros says...
>
>Brad Roberts wrote:
>> 
>> The recent look/feel updates to wiki4d are good, in general change spurrs 
>> activity. :)
>> 
>> As a step to facilitate even more activity, I just spent an hour or so 
>> going through a good portion of the contents of this wiki and created a 
>> page to list stale content:
>> 
>>      http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?StalePages
>> 
>> In the process, I found this page, which is also a good place to 
>> concentrate some energy:
>> 
>>      http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?HelpDProgress
>> 
>> Additionally, I added a reference to the StalePages page on this 
>> HelpDProgress page.
>> 
>> I'll be adding to the list of staleness as well as addressing some of the 
>> pages that I feel suited to tackle, but a group effort is called for.
>> 
>> Later,
>> Brad
>
>Good idea. "Less is More" is especially true here, as removing stale 
>information adds value to the wiki.

A good thing about how the wiki works is that after a page has been edited, the 
old content still exists in the "archive".

>In fact, it would be interesting to call for a collaborative work to 
>clean some (or many) of the wiki parts. A more radical approach, but one 
>which I would support, would be to Garbage Collect the whole thing. 
>(meaning to blank all entries, and then re-enter (or re-edit) those who 
>are still found to be significant). Perhaps a bit too radical?

I think that's too radical. It'd be better to start a new wiki (using MediaWiki
of course since everyone seems to be in love with it). Maybe the "book" that
Frank Benoit mentioned could be used
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:D). Since the Wiki4D content has a
nice license, you could copy a page at a time to the new site. Once you put it
on the new site, you could blank out the Wiki4D page with a link to the new page
(so we remember where it went and people know where to update the content). 

But I'm happy at Wiki4D, so don't expect me to help out with this project. I
wouldn't stand in the way of a person or group systematically moving from Wiki4D
to a new wiki (it's not like I have any authority in the matter anyway), but I
don't think that's the best use of time. I think our time is better spent by
improving up pages incrementally at Wiki4D.

>In any case, I would like to help clean up some of the parts related to 
>language peeves and design issues.

Great!

>The [DONE] entries should be removed (except perhaps any very recent ones).

Sounds good. The content remains in the "archive", so we wouldn't really be
loosing anything.

>Also, the introduction of the Bugzilla makes it redundant for the wiki 
>to report on issues that are merely bugs.

Right. But people can still highlight there personal pet peeves in their
namesake wiki entries if they want to.

>Thinking even further, the wiki could be used as a repository for 
>summaries of the current "discussion state" of design 
>features/peeves/issues. A standardized method and/or page for doing so 
>would even be better. For instance a wiki page lists the common existing 
>design issues, and for each one of those, another wiki entry exists 
>listing a summary/abstract, background(optional), issue description, 
>points and threads argued, community feedback (both negative and 
>positive). Even if Walter doesn't pay attention to it (which is 
>expected) it helps a bit to the community to know what is the current 
>status, and the opinion of the rest of the community members.

There's already some material like this in the wiki, but it's not really
"standardized". And there could be a lot more of it.

>I know thar there very standardized and very formalized processes for 
>languages changes in some other languages, and someone with knowledge of 
>these (I haven't) could contribute some good well-based ideas. We don't 
>need nor should have anything that complicated though, just something 
>simple, which is useful enough already.

>Opinions, comments, sugestions on what I said, please.

You have some good ideas.

jcc7