Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 10:32:23AM -0300, Margarita Manterola wrote:Also, as to the question of why is it a wiki, it's because wikis are easier to edit and update than established documentation. The documentation that can only be edited by a few is bound to get outdated quickly.I wonder why do we then have a CVS any developer can get access to that provides all the Debian documentation (DDP) as well as a CVS for all thewebsite any Debian developer (and even non-DD) can easily contribute to. I would urge to go read http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp, if you have not doneso already.
With the wiki, anybody can put up a new page, mark it "this is a draft or an experiment or a random rambling" and it can be improved by others without it being accepted as part of the official site or meeting a quality standard for official documentation.
With the site in CVS, someone must check out the site (ok, that's not too tough, but does make it harder to do it at work in my lunchbreak), make their change, build the site locally, then what? punt the patch at the BTS or debian-www? What kind of exposure will a half-baked idea or a draft piece of work get that way?
Perhaps the existing route would be more suitable for this kind-of work if there was a development website somewhere, which people could push patches at without them having to meet a minimum quality standard. Like a CVS branch that is published.
If you dislike the current documentation development system in Debian, by all means, go ahead and improve it or make suggestions of how it fails in the appropiate mailing list, but do not actively work against it just because you don't like it.
I do not see how Marga using the d-w wiki is actively working against the current documentation system. This really is a storm in a tea cup. She has produced something for her own benefit which she has released to all because it might be useful to others. If you think what she has produced is something that should be in the official documentation, that's great: it can be made so! But Marga is not obliged to have done so from the start.
Indeed, highlighting the ease with which someone can public something on the wiki vs. the traditional method seems like a positive step towards improving documentation, by highlighting current defects.
-- Jon Dowland