Re: Link to Hurd twiki

[Grant Bowman]

Thanks Marcus and Neal for expressing your opinions.  I appreciate your
willingness to (finally) discuss this issue.

* Marcus Brinkmann <address@hidden> [020626 13:42]:
> I don't think the Wiki deserves its own link in the menu.  Among other
> reasons[1], the menu partitions the Hurd web site, and the Wiki is not part
> of that.  Alfred seemed to express a similar opinion in
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>

The intent of starting this twiki was to give people a place for up to
date information as it changes.  It's also a good way for people to
demonstrate their knowledge and assist others in a public way.  Marcus,
I believe this "trial" has been successful within the scope of our
previous discussions.  A low-impact next step in making use of this
information is a link of some kind.  I see no need or desire at this
point to move the data to another server but if this would help in some
way I am willing to discuss it.  It is unfortunate that the URL to
access the Hurd twiki contains linux in it, but this is only an
unfortunate coincidence.  I greatly appreciate the efforts of Joachim
and his company in providing the resources and effort necessary in
hosting the twiki.

There is more information about who and what is being worked on
available from the twiki than the official Hurd pages.  The twiki
currently contains updates to other public documents that new and vetran
Hurd users depend on like the Installation Guide.  

   http://www.vmlinux.org/twiki/bin/view/Hurd/InstallNotes

During the ABI transition it was the only source of reliable information
regarding the location of tarballs needed to install a new system.  Due
to the nature of the twiki, details can be added easily and quickly.
These updates can be done not only by the original author but by anyone
knowledgable enough and confident enough to change it.

More importantly to the project as a whole, users can help themselves in
getting their Hurd machines running.  This methods mimicks the Hurd
project's recursive naming and philosophy.  Operating the twiki has
proven to not only be very efficient in the use of precious developer
resources but also gives more opportunity for users to participate in
ways that are reasonable and helpful.  This is accomplished very low
impact on other project resources and inproves the quality of
information presented to the public at large.  I believe much
information such as the information about the Hurd being discussed on a
radio show in Chile would have been overlooked without such an
information repository as the twiki.  

   http://www.vmlinux.org/twiki/bin/view/Hurd/SeenHurd

While use of the twiki is still not used as a dominant information
source it has proven it's use and value.  I can't count the number of
times that users have come to the #hurd IRC channel and asked questions
that were answered by the twiki.  I have also tried to update the twiki
as questions are answered.  Help in this process would increase the
value of the twiki.  While there are still some unanswered issues
regarding the use of the data due to copyright assignment I feel the
resource has proven itself a valuable addition to the Hurd development
and user communities and a good information resource for others not yet
familiar with the Hurd.

Marcus, to address your reasons in order:

a. I don't categorize the wiki along with other websites related to the
   Hurd.  Other websites have specific focus while the twiki is designed
   to have a general focus and broad participation.  While you can
   linearly extrapolate that all projects should recieve a similar
   treatment I do not agree with this.

b. Partitioning of the Hurd website is the way things are done now,
   however I do see overlap in the intended coverage of what the hurd
   website is trying to cover and the twiki.  While most pages attempt
   to cover new content, the twiki covers similar content from different
   perspectives, allowing more than just the people who have access to
   the official web pages to provide updates to live information.

   While some people may have concerns about the security of such
   information, in practice it has worked extremely well so far.  There
   is full version control to roll back any malicious changes.  I and
   others also check each change to any related page via the email
   updates that we receive.

   It is true the the twiki can seem to remove some level of control
   from those currently with CVS commit access to the official Hurd web
   pages.  I would hope that additional help in keeping Hurd web data
   current would be welcomed rather than discouraged given the amount of
   time available to these individuals for project participation. 

   Would changing the link text in some way to inform users they would
   no longer be viewing official gnu.org content be acceptable?

> I told you before that I am ok with a link to the Wiki on a page about related
> projects, which in turn would have a menu item, and link to other Savanna
> projects that are related to the Hurd and also to the wiki.

Yes, but this is not what I have presented.  I appreciate your thoughts
on this and should this ever come about I welcome it.

> The people who are technically allowed to commit changes to the web page are
> listed in the Savannah project page, you can look it up there.  But it is
> custom to send patches here for discussion.

I understand this, but because the exact nature of what we are
discussing is still being worked out it seems premature for a patch.  If
I had some assurances that a patch would be applied I would certainly
create one.  Asking for a patch with full knowledge you have no intent
to apply it is frustrating and an inefficient use of my time.

While a news article would be helpful and welcomed I do not see this as
a replacement for my recommendation.

-- 
-- Grant Bowman                                <address@hidden>


> Thanks,
> Marcus
> 
> [1] One other reason is that if we would add all links to the menu, it would
> get pretty crowded in there.
> 
> -- 
> `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org address@hidden
> Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    address@hidden
> address@hidden
> http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de