Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 01:06:10 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> To: "Aryeh M. Friedman" <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com> Cc: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Wiki for discussing P35/IHC9(R)/SATA issues set up Message-ID: <20071106090610.GA83703@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <20071106082522.GA22607@kobe.laptop> References: <op.t1b121p9ufp0mi@localhost> <472F6B02.2030801@delphij.net> <op.t1b37ronufp0mi@localhost> <472F7C05.6050000@conducive.net> <472FCE60.9070806@gmail.com> <47301A4A.2030807@conducive.net> <47301E48.1000409@gmail.com> <20071106080634.GA8648@kobe.laptop> <473021A6.3000203@gmail.com> <20071106082522.GA22607@kobe.laptop>
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On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 10:25:22AM +0200, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> I only mentioned why the mailing list should be where all discussion
> takes place because you seem to be pushing so hard about 'the wiki'
> (as in 'mentioning every couple of posts or so').
>
> That's fine.
I've been considering responding to this thread for quite some time, but
have sat quiet until now. I knew this would happen, sigh...
Wikis are not for this sort of thing. They are for community-managed
documentation of a subject -- they are not for bug tracking,
troubleshooting, or patch-providing. Yes, I am aware that there are
Wikis all over the place that are being used for this sort of thing, and
those people should really reconsider what they're using the Wiki for.
Yes, I am fairly opinionated on this matter.
Here's some facts about Wikis which apply to this specific scenario:
Wikis are completely and totally chaotic:
- Person A visits the Wiki, sees Information Point X. Person A
then goes off to write a patch over the course of 24-48 hours,
to address the problem in Information Point X.
- Within that 24-48 hours, Person B has decided to update the
Wiki with "new information", including such things as removing
Information Point X entirely.
- 24-48 hours later, Person A posts a patch to the mailing list
where the Wiki was mentioned. Person B responds "That's a non-
issue/no longer a problem, did you not read the Wiki?"
- Above usually does not happen with mailing lists, simply because
people consider mail more important/more real-time than a Wiki.
Wikis make following conversations impossible:
- Look at Wikipedia's "Discussion" tabs sometime; HI I THNK BLA
BLA AND WHOEVUR FOOBARBLAT IZ YEAH WELL UR RONG LOL ~~~~MYNAME).
Yeah, that's a really good way to communicate. *blink*
- A Wiki should not be used as a mailing list replacement.
The instant I saw "I've got this Wiki for all of this" posted, I knew
this entire issue was going to become impossible to follow, and would
drive developers batty.
> PS: Your mailer seems to be stripping off attribution lines, which makes
> it a bit hard to follow deeply nested quotes. Can you please check to
> see if there's an option to fix that?
I do the same thing (case point). Deeply-nested quotes become
incredibly annoying when you have to skip 4-5 pages of quotes just to
get to the reply. It's much easier to use a mail client that has decent
threading support (mutt for example), and for recalling what someone
said, look back a couple thread entries. But at least he's not
top-posting, right? ;-)
--
| Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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