[ Please note the cross-post and Reply-To ]
Hi folks,
Here's a summary of what we discussed in the debian wiki BoF [1] last
week (13th July). Thanks to the awesome efforts of the DebConf video
team, the video of the session is already online [2] in case you
missed it. I've also attached the Gobby notes that were taken during
the session. Again, thanks to the people who took part - we had a very
useful discussion.
Current wiki statistics
=======================
* 11,199 users
* 14,525 pages after deleting lots of spam (10,242 active in
SystemInfo)
What we've done in the last year
================================
Anti-spam
---------
Much of the work we've done has been to deal with the ever-present
spam problem. The main thrust of that is to stop drive-by spammers
by making it harder to create throw-away accounts.
I added moin support for re-captcha for new account creation. Not a
very popular feature, but it basically worked OK. It's not friendly
for vision-impaired users (#678540), so we're probably going to
disable it soon; email verification is probably enough.
I also added moin support for email verification for new accounts;
previously, signup would ask for an email address for password
recovery purposes but did no verification. Now, an account
activation link is sent and the link must be followed before logging
in is allowed with the new account.
Performance bugs
----------------
There was a silly design bug (#668000) in the page save code in
moin that caused a massive slowdown. Every time a page was saved,
the code would have to check config for all the wiki users to see
which user(s) had requested notifications. At its worst, this was
adding up to a minute to the time needed to save pages. We've taken
and adapted a patch originally developed by the Gnome wiki admins to
add a cache here, and it's made a huge difference.
There are still more performancs bugs yet, including a couple that
eat lots of memory in some cases. Looking into these as and when...
Things still wanted
===================
We keep on discussing potentially moving to a new wiki engine, but
there's always the cost of migrating existing data to a new
markup. The plan is to look into moving to moin2 (available Real Soon
Now!) at some point. We'll set up a test wiki when that happens, and
ask for volunteers to help test things.
There is still a long-standing desire to integrate the contents of the
DebConf wiki into wiki.d.o, but again this will take a lot of
migration effort.
The wiki admins are always looking for more help in the wiki, helping
to track and delete spam and maintain the vast amount of content we
have.
There is ongoing effort to set up single-sign-on across Debian web
apps, including the wiki. I've been talking with DSA people about
this, more news once we get more of this done.
There are some issues keeping the wiki them in step with the main
Debian website via CSS. More effort (probably) needed, especially as
we come to a release.
i18n/l10n: Moin is not great at supporting these for page content. We
have proposed solutions to make this better:
Proposal #1 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/I18n
Proposal #2 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/EditorGuide#Translations
(but use a tool to track outdated translations by comparing
the version (datestamp) of the master page, and the version
referenced in the transleted version)
Planning to look into these in the future, but no timescale yet.
Wiki content licensing is *still* an issue. Had a discussion about
re-licensing content with some members of the d-www team on their
experiences. This is an important topic, but desperately needs
somebody to step in and help with it; too much work for existing
admins to contemplate alone...
Ideas
=====
Freeze documentation for every debian release and have it in separate
sections. Right now is a mess and not very useful. After a new release
happens, you can copy the content in the new release and improve upon
it. This way, for old stable they still have they documentation right
and improvements can happen without making it too noisy
[1] http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/872.en.html
[2] http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2012/debconf12/high/872_wiki.debian.org.ogv
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
"Managing a volunteer open source project is a lot like herding
kittens, except the kittens randomly appear and disappear because they
have day jobs." -- Matt Mackall
lease take notes here
Summary of what we've done in the last year
* recaptcha for new accounts (anti-spam, #678540)
* to be removed in favour of email verification.
* will remove dependance on google's recaptach. (cool! says Franklin)
* email verification for new accounts (anti-spam)
* save performance bug fixed (silly moin bug)
* 11,199 users, the entire list being processed for each save.
* 14,525 pages after deleting pages as spam. (10242 active in SystemInfo)
Things still wanted
* to migrate debconf wiki, would need to adjust the markup
* move to moin2? (available RSN?)
* release not ready yet but changed wiki format.
investigate via a test wiki once moin2 becomes available.
* move to a different wiki engine?
+ ikiwiki?
+ mediawiki?
* could merge with debconf wiki
More admin help always appreciated
Problems?
User names and passwords are entirely separate from the rest of Debian.
DSA being consulted on single-signin support.
Keep the theme in step with the website theme via VCS.
Internationalisation / Localization
Proposal #1 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/I18n
Proposal #2 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/EditorGuide#Translations
(but use a tool to track outdated translationn by comparing
the version (datestamp) of the master page, and the version
refreenced in the transleted version)
Ideas:
- freeze documentation for every debian release and have it in separate sections. Right now is a mess and not very useful. After a new release happens, you can copy the content in the new release and improve upon it. This way, for old stable they still have they documentation right and improvements can happen without making it too noisy
=> Note: Google is not your friend. You are very likely to be redirected
to the $old-stable version of that page.Attachment:
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