Re: Debian Wiki: License & Helping with transition
On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 20:26 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:13:52 +0200
> Franklin PIAT <fpiat@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 18:34 -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> > > On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:02:43 +0200
> > > Franklin PIAT <fpiat@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > So to make it short : You can create a "book" on our wiki, with a
> > > > specific license. Also, you are welcome to review the page [3] and
> > > > [4].
> > >
> > > Is there anyway to make sub-pages also automatically have the
> > > appropriate copyright? It's going to be a pain if a user starts a
> > > new page and I have to contact a page creator each time a new page
> > > is created because the wiki has no copyright.
> >
> > Short answer no, but from my experience, users rarely create pages in
> > such projects.
>
> I guess I should clarify. I don't expect full-blown manual pages, just
> recipes and hints and tips and that sort of thing.
>
> > Your parent parent page should contain some instructions on how to
> > contribute to that documentation.
> >
> > Typically, you should have a page that contains the license, then
> > include that page in subpages, with :
> > [[Include(MyPageName/Copyright)]].
>
> Ah, I didn't know about that.
>
> > Do not expect users to write a manual, it just doesn't work. If you
> > want someone to write a manual, you will have to write it yourself.
> > (Contributors write a few lines in a page, but they don't *build* a
> > structured text, like a manual or a book).
>
> Ah, well that I expected. What I want is a place for things like how
> to get this piece of hardware working and the like, as happens on the
> Ubuntu wiki by non-devs.
It's probably a wrong example :
* The wiki already have such pages (see InstallingDebianOn).
* We (you, me and the users) don't want to have multiples page on
the wiki to report hardware howtos.
* Those pages are very different from a concept of "manual".
* Those pages are probably very generic for Debian, and they shouldn't
be located within your subpages, IMHO.
Another question is : do you want to write a manual or a wiki ?
> The actual manual will be written by me, I'm just hoping that there
> will be contributions that are useful other than my own (maybe even by
> devs once it's well underway), since I probably won't think of
> everything and it would speed things up if other people contributed.
> And of course rewording for clarity and correctness and that sort of
> thing when I make errors (in fact that is probably the single biggest
> things I actually am thinking is likely, and am hoping will happen).
That's the level of contribution you should expect (except the
rewording). You may have more contribution, but that would be bonus ;)
> Most of what goes in the manual will not be specific to my project
> although some of the desktop stuff will be XFCE-specific (and I'm
> hoping someone else will do Gnome and KDE bits so the manual becomes a
> point of reference for most end-users).
?!@?#?!!
You should get in touch with Osamu Aoki (the maintainer of
DebianReference) and talk with him to understand why DR isn't a regular
user guide.
If I could give you one advice... You should define what you exactly
want to cover in your book, then evaluate how much time you can afford.
> The objective is to move things from the wiki to other pages, the wiki
> is just a convenient places for collaborative editing. I hope.
> Unless
> I'd be better advised to just write docbook to start, and get patches
> (but again, I'm hoping there will be edits from non-dev users too).
Docbook allow variable substitution (useful for derivatives).
Actually, you might want to see if you can reuse [patch] an existing
documentation.
Regards,
Franklin
P.S. You may feel that some of my answers are a bit negative... It's
just that I'm pointing to where others have failed in the past.
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