Re: Debian Wiki and wikihomepages
On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 10:11 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Mar 2009, Frank Lin PIAT wrote:
> > Raphael,
> >
> > > Contribuez à Debian et gagnez un cahier de l'admin Debian Lenny :
> > > www.o uaza.com/wp/2009/03/02/contribuer-a-debian-gagner-un-livre/
> >
> > Your contest to make people win your book if they contributed to Debian
> > was probably a good idea...
> >
> > However, asking people to write a wiki homepage containing nothing but
> > the list of what he/she did for Debian wasn't a good idea:
>
> IMO it's important for new contributors to
> be able to have a page where they list all their contributions because if we
> ever want to grant them some special status, they need to show us what
> they did and pointing to that wiki page is then the right thing.
[..]
> I have not invented this out of the blue, it's exactly how Ubuntu are
> doing. Anyone who wants to become MOTU has to create its own pages[..]
Ubuntu is Ubuntu, Debian is Debian...
As far as I know, Debian has it's own process and tools.
That could be interesting for Debian for DM/NM process. However the MOTU
pages aren't usual homepage but an application form.
/me wonders if we really want to have contributors going into a kind of
competition, by tracking what they did... then pretend "Based on what I
did, I deserve to ..." or "I do more than you do so ...". When I was
young, my father used to say "Don't count what your brothers and sisters
have done, just do what has to be done."
...But this is a different topic.
</me>
> So I'm not "abusing" the wiki for my contest,
I didn't say you were abusing the wiki. I don't think it either.
> I just ask them to follow a process to help them in the future if they
> want to apply for Debian Maintainer or anything similar.
Administrative task are boring, Debian is fun (and high quality
standards).
A good contributor is one that send good patches, bugreport, etc...
organizational/administrative skills aren't required for new
contributors, are they?
If one can't remember it's contribution to Debian, he/she just have to
review its mailbox Sent folder.
(hint: don't apply to NM unless you have many mail sent to
bugs.debian.org, and many mails with a .diff file attached)
> > Wiki homepage are for wiki contributors only (it's a mean to contact
> > wiki contributors, and understand their motivation).
>
> I do not agree with this. The wiki is also a tool for other teams
> including NM
For sure, why not.
> if we ask people to use a wiki page for valid purpose,
> there's no reason to forbid this.
Please, re-read my quoted paragraph below.
> Consider this an experiment that concerns the NM team.
1. homepage aren't application for template.
2. It would have been nice to ask on debian-www before hand (like
you would RM, ftpmaster... on various situation)
> > There are lots of reasons why we don't want to have billions of
> > wikihomepages (People should be invited to contribute to official
> > documentations rather that on the wiki ; Limit spam ; Limit workload of
> > maintaining the pages / what if DebianWiki had 1 million user wiki home
> > page? ; the wikihomepage and regular wikipage share the same namespace ;
> > and many other reasons I can't think of right now).
>
> None of those reasons are very convincing.
you mean that it isn't convincing to you.
I didn't mention that the consequence of having a shared namespace, is
that when you search in the wiki, results in homepages are listed too...
and since some usernames aren't very explicit so the visitor have to
open the page to notice it's not what he wants.
Yes, this is a problem in the wiki engine we are using.
> The ubuntu wiki works well despite all of this.
Nice statement. "doesn't work" is another nice statement.
I just had a quick look at it, and no one seems to care about their wiki
at large. For example, the wiki is being heavily spammed. Many homepages
are absolutely dummy or from people that don't make contribution, etc...
> > Actually, we drop
> > wikihomepage for wikiuser who made no contribution to the wiki 1 month
> > after the page creation.
>
> Please don't do that in this case. The contest ends at end of june. I can
> help you do a pass on all the wiki pages at that point if needed.
People will be used to do it, by then : It's easy to get a bad habit,
it's difficult to get a good habit.
> But you have CategoryHomepage to ease the maintenance workload so that you can
> skip those pages.
Thank you for that hint, but you may not know that I spent the 6 first
month on the wiki killing dummy pages, then inappropriate pages, then
obsolete pages, then I could start merging similar pages, etc...
I am also reviewing most contribution to ensure people don't break
things, follow the current practices, don't spam, don't create dummy
pages, don't start "reorganizing" 50 random pages (i.e break them), them
leave, etc... Then I could help teams update/organize their wiki pages
[BTW, your Teams/* pages was a great idea].
All in all, I usually say that I probably removed more that 2000 pages
(the actual figure is probably much higher).
> > It would be nice if you could change the contest's rules so participants
> > use their usual website/homepage.
>
> You can't expect everybody to have their own website.
There are lots of ISP/associations/companies that offer
website/homepage/blog hosting for free. I suppose we can expect
contributors to be able to get one.
Please consider rewording your blog post so people are invited to link
to their home page, then use the wiki as a fallback solution.
BTW, using their homepages would make Debian more visible.
Thanks,
Franklin
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