Rewriting the Wiki in Markdown

[Bradley Stannard]

Hi All,

I left a comment on a reddit thread about the rLab wiki, and I've offered to re-write it in mkdocs format (Screenshot at end of post)

I thought I would post here just getting the consensus, if this is something that would be worthwhile undertaking? 

If it is, would anyone be interested in helping?

Benefits of mkdocs over something like mediawiki:

1. Everything in markdown. Making it easier to move around places (For example, from mkdocs to git book, docasarus etc)
2. Dont have to run a server hosting the site. Mkdocs can run on fly.io, a raspberry pi, GitHub pages. 
3. Not managing users your self. Users who want to make changes can use their GitHub account. 
4. Custom templates: You can add fields to the page like `training: 1` and it will automatically populate a box at the top of the page explaining this tool needs level 1 training
5. Better navigation: The mediawiki design is more for people searching, opposed to browsing. mkdocs allows for simple sidebar navigation, as well as search.
6. No Database: I dont think you're currently hosting the site, but there is no requirement for a database to back the service. It's all static HTML files, meaning caching is super simple using cloudflare or fastly etc
7. Contributing is easer. Users can make edits in the webUI of Github, or locally on their PC. Users get to learn a new skill if they so desire. 
8. Better process for Quality control where users can comment on changes, leave comments about issues and report them in a simple manner (open an issue on github)

Of course, this assumes github. GitLab, Gitea, probably even gerrit can be used.

One of the main reasons I thought I'd ask, is there was the popup asking for donations and to speed up the wiki, but upon further reading, that money doesn't go to rLab, it goes to the wiki hosting company. We can very easily add a banner at the top of the page for donations to rLab, or news etc.

I run a few mkdocs sites if you want to verify my credentials 

• documentation.breadnet.co.uk/
  
• bradley.breadnet.co.uk
• Internal sites at work
• Berkshire Scouts IT Documentation
• userbradley.github.io/BeReal/
  

If this gets the go ahead, I'd be more than happy to work with anyone willing to learn markdown or anything! 

Any Questions please by all means ask

Till next time

Bradley

RG41

[Jeremy Poulter]

Hi,

As we had issues with our Pi hosted media wiki recently we did discuss this recently. Largely the consensus was to carry on with MediaWiki, but that was in the context of recovery of the wiki. I think there were some good arguments for moving to Markdown however. Are you a member of rLab? If so you should join the Discord server and discuss the options there. You can get details from hello at rlab.org.uk.

Cheers,

Jeremy 

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