[Grok-dev] Role of the Grok Wiki

[Kent Tenney]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Martijn Faassen
<faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Kent Tenney wrote:
>> I have proposed what strikes me as a compromise: add links
>> to an editable wiki page, where namespace owners, project owners,
>> and busy bodies like me could put additional information.
>
> That sounds like a good idea.
>
>> =====================================
>>  Grok Wiki
>>
>> The Grok Wiki on zope.org. Use this for temporary throw-away documents
>> about Grok,
>> sprint planning, and so on. More permanent documents about Grok should
>> be part of
>> this website - please contribute!
>> =====================================
>>
>> I think that sells the Wiki concept short, and fails to take advantage
>> of the years of work Simon Michael has put into Zwiki.
>
> Let me explain the motivation behind this. The Zope community has had
> years of experience with wikis. In my experience it turned out to be
> very difficult to keep many wikis maintained and navigable. I often
> ended up rather lost in a forest of wiki pages. This applies especially
> to the Zope 3 wiki, and also to the "how to become a contributor" wiki
> page which I could for some reason only find after a struggle to
> remember, over and over again each time I needed it.
>
> In the Grok community I therefore strongly encourage a more structured
> approach to documentation, where there's a documentation artifact (the
> website, docs in SVN) that we care actively about.
>
> I realize that of course wikis *can* be successful and successfully
> maintained (wikipedia is a great success story), but I also think that
> the current Grok site works a lot better than some of the Zope-related
> wikis I've seen.
>
> I don't think this conflicts with your notion of having a wiki "talk"
> page per library we discuss on the library page, where people can very
> easily contribute more information. I'd see such a talk page as a
> temporary throwaway area with useful information, questions and
> comments, that hopefully occasionally people will fold into either the
> official documentation for the package discussed, or the Grok
> documentation on the grok web site.
>
>> Returning to the intro to the Grok Wiki, it was unclear to me what the request
>> 'please contribute' means, so, via 'Documentation' -> 'Contribute' I reach
>> a page which describes a somewhat formal process for contribution.
>
> I'm not sure I understand. Do you have a suggestion as to how we can fix
> the text?

see below.

>
>> I think the wiki could fill a gap between the temporal stream of information
>> the mailing list provides, and the submitted, reviewed and published howtos
>> and tutorials the documentation site offers.
>
> I agree. I think that fits the description of the wiki, but..
>
>> It seems that changing the description of the wiki,
>
> what would you suggest as an improved description? I'm sure it can be
> improved, but I don't want to lose the original meaning that we really
> don't want the wiki to be a permanent location for organized
> information, but move this to more formal documentation.

I think something like this would be appropriate in both
'Documentation' and 'Community'

"The Grok Wiki offers a `painless and quick <link_to_wiki_intro>`_ way
to submit a hint, tip
or useful link, whereas the content of this site follows
`a more formal process
<http://grok.zope.org/documentation/tutorial/contribute-to-the-grok-documentation>`_,
Please contribute freely to the Wiki, and consider keeping an eye
towards writing
a howto or tutorial to add to this site. Any volunteers interested in
Wiki Gardening are
welcomed with open arms"

>
>> and maybe adjusting
>> permissions (I was unable to create a page) would be sufficient to provide
>> a convenient entry point for submitted information.
>
> As to permissions to create a page, could I delegate you to look into that?

I think someone with access and a better understanding of permissions
would be a better candidate, but I'd give it a try.

I was refering to the auto-create feature, accessing the url
http://wiki.zope.org/grok/GrokWiki/PageDoesntExistYet
gives the option "Do you want to create PageDoesnt... ?"

Earlier today I'm sure I got the offer to create the page, and couldn't.
Now I get an error.

>
>> With a little promotion, the wiki might become valuable, at no appreciable
>> cost to the formal documentation team.
>
> +1. I think the best way to discuss this is to offer "extra info" wiki
> links per package and link them in. We can then see how that works, and
> perhaps offer such links to wiki pages elsewhere on grok.zope.org as well.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martijn
>
>
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