Re: [Caml-list] OCaml wiki

[Philippe Veber <philippe.veber@gmail.com>]

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Of course you can do good stuff with a wiki! I was not arguing that a wiki
is not an adequate medium to build a website, but rather that we should not
duplicate our efforts. I think building a site of good quality and well
organised is a lot of work *whatever* the technology you're relying on (not
to mention, the time to get it accepted) The site ocaml.org is built with
templated HTML and stored on github, this is one possible technical choice
where contributions are easy to make if the procedure is documented
properly. Right now I see no compelling argument to start a wiki, and just
argued that we should first focus on the website. Maybe after some time
(and hopefully many contributions :o)!), it will become evident that we
need something else (maybe a wiki), but right now I find it risky to split
our efforts in several community projects. Sorry if my previous message was
not clear, and thanks for the pointer to the guidelines!

2012/12/21 Fermin Reig <ferminreig@fastmail.fm>

> For what it's worth, haskell.org is a wiki and the contents is of good
> quality and well organised. Guidelines for contributing are available at
> http://www.haskell.org/**haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:**Contributing<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Contributing>
>
> On 21/12/12 08:37, Philippe Veber wrote:
>
>> For what it's worth, my opinion is also that we should focus our efforts
>> on the website, especially now that we have something that we can be proud
>> of (kudos to all those behind ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org>). As the
>> development of the website showed very well, it takes a really high amount
>> of time and tenacious work to do something useful *and* acknowledged. I
>> think there is a limited man-power in the community to advertise and
>> document our favorite language, let's not split it up but rather pour it
>> into a single, high-quality and carefully reviewed contents. I feel the
>> best achievement of ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org> is to exist as a
>> central place where to add ocaml material, improving the readability of
>> ocaml as a whole, and the visibility of ocaml projects. Pushing to a git
>> repo is more difficult than adding stuff on a wiki, but we nerds don't
>> really care about that, right ;o)?
>>
>> So yes, the only benefit I see for the wiki is to lower the barrier for
>> contributions. It is true (I tried this morning) that it is not
>> straightforward to contribute to the site for those who do not use opam and
>> git everyday (not to mention that you have to know HTML basics). But with a
>> proper documentation, using git to contribute the website is not so
>> difficult, and has lots of (editorial) benefits. Plus that way we help
>> people to learn those anyway useful technologies. Unless someone wants to
>> write it, I can have a try at writing a page "Contributing to ocaml.org <
>> http://ocaml.org>" (I couldn't see such a page on the website).
>>
>>
>>
>> 2012/12/21 Ashish Agarwal <agarwal1975@gmail.com <mailto:
>> agarwal1975@gmail.com>**>
>>
>>
>>     A wiki could be good but I strongly encourage any such effort to
>>     integrate with ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org>, and to carefully
>>
>>     weigh the pros and cons. Wikis make contributions easier, but you
>>     need someone to keep the content organized and do some basic
>>     quality control. Also, the structure of the documentation is not
>>     very customizable. The question is whether pushing to a git repo
>>     (the current contribution method for ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org>)
>>
>>     is so much harder (given that we're all programmers after all).
>>
>>     The tutorials page is a good candidate for converting to wiki
>>     format, but remember that a wiki is where all this content came
>>     from, and it eventually got out of date. We could create
>>     wiki.ocaml.org <http://wiki.ocaml.org>, but then the question is
>>
>>     how to make it integrate nicely with the rest of the pages that
>>     don't fit the wiki model.
>>
>>     Finally, which wiki software to use? None are very good, and who
>>     amongst us is keen to hack into php code. My initial goal for
>>     ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org> was to use ocsigen and ocsimore, but
>>
>>     there is a big upfront cost in getting such a site implemented.
>>
>>     Whatever the community decides, we can support and integrate with
>>     ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org>. My only strong opinion is please
>>
>>     don't build a separate unrelated site, with duplication of effort
>>     and and fragmentation of content.
>>
>>
>>     On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Wojciech Meyer
>>     <wojciech.meyer@gmail.com <mailto:wojciech.meyer@gmail.**com<wojciech.meyer@gmail.com>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>         Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org <mailto:anil@recoil.org>>
>>
>>         writes:
>>
>>         > On 20 Dec 2012, at 23:31, Benedikt Meurer
>>         <benedikt.meurer@googlemail.**com<benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com>
>>         <mailto:benedikt.meurer@**googlemail.com<benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com>>>
>> wrote:
>>         >>
>>         >> On Dec 21, 2012, at 0:22 , Anil Madhavapeddy
>>         <anil@recoil.org <mailto:anil@recoil.org>> wrote:
>>         >>
>>         >>> Personally, I've got mixed feelings about wikis from
>>         experience with
>>         >>> previous projects, since they get out of date very rapidly
>>         indeed. They
>>         >>> do work well if someone's maintaining it, but if that's
>>         the case, why
>>         >>> not just push these tips and guides to the existing
>>         ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org> site?
>>
>>         >>>
>>         >>> I'm happy to run a wiki on the OCL infrastructure, but
>>         would strongly
>>         >>> prefer contributions to the ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org>
>>
>>         Git repo with all this good stuff
>>         >>> instead!  If it really turns out we need a swanky wiki,
>>         that can be arranged
>>         >>> later...
>>         >>
>>         >> Why not use the wiki provided by Github for the ocaml.org
>>         <http://ocaml.org> project?
>>
>>         >
>>         > That works too; Thomas has written a Github Markdown to HTML
>>         converter in
>>         > COW [1], and is using that to generate the OPAM website from
>>         the Github
>>         > wiki (for the documentation that you see on
>>         opam.ocamlpro.com <http://opam.ocamlpro.com>).
>>
>>
>>         Yes, we could use github pages as long as they are searchable,
>>         I see no
>>         problem with it. I think the biggest advantage of wiki would
>>         be that
>>         everything would be in single place and hyperlinked.
>>
>>         As for protecting the wiki from being up-date emacswiki [1] is
>>         always a
>>         great example that it is possible as long as people maintain their
>>         webpages. Also, I feel that ocaml.org <http://ocaml.org> pages
>>
>>         on github would be a good
>>         entry point.
>>
>>         [1] http://emacswiki.org/
>>
>>         -Wojciech
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>

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