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2 articles on the problems of emacswiki

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Xah Lee

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Mar 20, 2012, 12:45:02 PM3/20/12
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2 articles on the problems of #emacs wiki

Die EmacsWiki, Die!
http://batsov.com/articles/2012/03/20/die-emacswiki/
(this one is from Bozhidar Batsov, who wrote emacs prelude)

〈Problems of Emacswiki〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_wiki_problem.html

Dan Espen

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Mar 20, 2012, 3:02:16 PM3/20/12
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Lots of my Google searches for Emacs info wind up in the Emacs
Wiki. I find what I want and I'm happy.

As for moving the tiny amount of code fragments I've put
on the wiki into github...well, I can't remember any search
results that pointed me to github.


--
Dan Espen

Alex Schroeder

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Mar 20, 2012, 6:32:05 PM3/20/12
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My answer remains the same… Just like in 2008, it's easy to complain and harder to do stuff. Just do it!

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/2012-03-20

Xah Lee

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Mar 21, 2012, 8:46:30 AM3/21/12
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On Mar 20, 3:32 pm, Alex Schroeder <kensan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My answer remains the same… Just like in 2008, it's easy to complain and harder to do stuff. Just do it!
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/2012-03-20

just want to say thank you Alex for the work.

i just read your blog about this now, one item you mentioned is:

“Assemble a team of moderators.” Indeed. Moderators! Where have you
been hiding for the last ten years! Are you volunteering? I’m a bit
wary regarding your deletionist tendencies. ...

that's a issue Alex. Your mindset matters a lot. People like me or
BozhidarBatsov couldn't just come in and start clean it up, because
that's not the convention there, and the random tips/chats will just
be added back sooner or later.

we've discussed this before. What's wrong with the wikipedia model? If
the wiki guide is set to something like wikipedia, to generate a
coherent article, wouldn't that improve emacswiki?

Xah

Alex Schroeder

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Mar 21, 2012, 12:30:17 PM3/21/12
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Am Mittwoch, 21. März 2012 13:46:30 UTC+1 schrieb Xah Lee:
> we've discussed this before. What's wrong with the wikipedia model? If
> the wiki guide is set to something like wikipedia, to generate a
> coherent article, wouldn't that improve emacswiki?

It's exactly the anger the article deletions generate. Somebody wanted to post something that was important to them, and they felt it was on topic, and then somebody else deletes it. They don't build on it, they don't integrate it, they want to gone. Now you need to understand the social dynamics at work. Will the next person post something that is important to them even if they feel it was on topic? How many readers have you pleased and how many future authors have you scared away? Striking the right balance is difficult!

As for the separation of pages and discussion, I remember asking this way back when (since adding discussion pages to the wiki is a simple switch in the config file). Have a read:
http://emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsWikiSuggestions#toc17

Oh, and what a wonderful find! This is what I wrote on the suggestion page years ago: "Personally, I think the wiki exists somewhere between the newsgroups, the FAQ, the mailing lists, and IRC. It’s certainly nowhere near the quality of organization and writing that the Emacs documentation has – and I don’t think this is the right medium to aim for this level of quality. I think the people willing to invest that amount of energy to write quality stuff ought to be writing the real Emacs documentation – and they probably are."

Some people want to change that. I have the nagging feeling they ought to be writing real Emacs documentation instead. Or a book.

Emacs Wiki is messy. I'm not sure anything else will work!

Cheers
Alex
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