Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Derek Atkins]

Frank,

"Frank H. Ellenberger"  writes:

> I asked you for your search patterns, which resulted in that pages and
> was still waiting for a response.

I thought he was talking about the Wiki Search, not Google Search.
Mediawiki has its own search capabilities available on the wiki.

> IIRC only the google bot is allowed to crawl the pages. Ask Derek for
> robots.txt.

It's not limited to just google bot, but robots.txt is supposed to limit
it only to "real" pages. 

> It should be clear, wiki search will not include docs - or knows someone
> a trick?

It will include it if's a wiki page.

-derek
-- 
   Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
   Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
   URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH
   warl...@mit.eduPGP key available
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Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[David T. via gnucash-devel]

Frank,

Thank you for your reply. 

I will start with an overall observation: I think that you and I see the 
GnuCash documentation realm in fundamentally different ways. 

I believe that the wiki and what I will refer to as the official documentation 
(defined as the Tutorial & Concepts Guide and the Help Manual) should primarily 
serve complementary roles, with information in the official docs taking 
precedence. To me, the wiki supplements the official docs. The wiki amplifies 
the official docs by providing information that is of limited interest to the 
broader community (such as methods for handling some esoteric accounting issue 
in GnuCash, or a technical issue on a specific platform). To me, information 
(such as the wiki glossary) should be removed in favor of material that is 
entered as part of the official documentation set.

I think that you see the wiki as a primary information source for users, and as 
such, you think it should contain its own more or less complete set of 
information about the program and its functions. I may be wrong about this, but 
I believe you have expressed opinions that seem to support this idea.

This means that information can be put in both the wiki and the official 
documentation without a problem for you. However, I do have a problem with 
keeping information in two places: it is a challenge to keep both sets of 
information up to date and in sync with one another—and it makes for more work 
for someone to maintain this synchronization. Your words below suggesting that 
the work is too much for you to manage only supports my point.

As for the specific example of the term “reconciliation’: You say that there is 
something missing from the documentation realm regarding this topic, and want 
to add information to the wiki and the glossary. I, however, see that 
Reconciliation has an entire section (4.4 in the Guide) dedicated to it. It is 
fully explained there as an aspect of Transactions. This section is also 
referenced in the chapter on Checkbooks, section 5.4. As you note, adding 
“reconciliation” to the glossary might be useful; that, however, doesn’t seem 
to me to be a legitimate reason to retain the Draft Concept Guide in its 
entirety.

On the issue of the Guide Glossary, I will note that this section is literally 
version 1, made completely based on the Wiki glossary and my own ideas of terms 
that could use definition for users. (I’ll note that I had thought that 
‘reconciliation’ was a common enough term that it didn’t need an entry in the 
Glossary. I am happy to have someone suggest otherwise, and will take steps to 
add it to the Guide Glossary). Since the Guide Glossary was based directly on 
the Wiki Glossary, I felt that the Wiki Glossary was superceded, and thus I 
deleted most of the Wiki content and added a note to consult the Guide 
Glossary. You overrode that decision, and I respected your wish to retain the 
duplicated information (despite the fact that I disagreed and still disagree 
with your assessment). 

I will note that it was never my intention that this version be considered the 
final one, and I would hope that others in the community with vested interests 
and different perspectives might have taken it upon themselves to contribute to 
the enhancement of the glossary to make it more complete (i.e., with more terms 
in it) and more useful (as in ensuring that first use of terms in the 
documentation referred to the glossary where necessary). 

There are methods for others to bring such enhancements to the docs—either by 
learning how to edit and submit documentation changes (as I somewhat have), or 
by submitting documentation bugs. 

As for scanning the Draft Concept Guide for such keywords, if I were to 
consider taking on such a task, I would go through the current versions of the 
documentation for such terms, rather than a ten-year old version. As I noted in 
another thread recently, that doesn’t sound like something I would want to 
spend my time on, however.

Finally, the GnuCash Wiki (and GnuCash in general) is no doubt a better place 
as a result of your contributions, and as you know, I have been quite 
collaborative in making some of your contributions read more idiomatically in 
English. In a reflection of my priorities, I have focused my energies in the 
Tutorial & Concept Guide. Given our different philosophies regarding the 
documentation roles, I think it might be better if *I* were the one to drop out 
of the Wiki world. I seem mostly to stir up trouble.

David


> On Dec 3, 2017, at 1:26 AM, Frank H. Ellenberger 
>  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Am 01.12.2017 um 04:55 schrieb David Thomas:
>> Frank,
>> 
>> I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the 
>> Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
>> 
>> As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a 
>> half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the 

Fwd: Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

"cc: gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org" failed

 Weitergeleitete Nachricht 
Betreff: Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?
Datum: Sat, 2 Dec 2017 21:26:07 +0100
Von: Frank H. Ellenberger <frank.h.ellenber...@gmail.com>
An: David Thomas <sunfis...@gmail.com>
Kopie (CC): gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org

Hi,

Am 01.12.2017 um 04:55 schrieb David Thomas:
> Frank,
> 
> I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the 
> Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
> 
> As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a 
> half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they are out 
> of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up in search 
> results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and its features 
> and functions. 
> 
> In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the 
> Draft Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages, 
> although your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s 
> search algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note 
> that fixing one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER search 
> engine now or in the future from finding and returning these pages despite 
> your best intentions). 

I asked you for your search patterns, which resulted in that pages and
was still waiting for a response.

IIRC only the google bot is allowed to crawl the pages. Ask Derek for
robots.txt.

> You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John 
> noted that might not actually hide the results.
> 
> Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating 
> reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and when I 
> entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first 5 
> hits were for the Draft Concept Guide.

Thank you for this search pattern!

1x FAQ (a special case)
4x Concept Guide draft
2x Announcement (a minor change)
1x Project and Design Documentation (Casimonos approach from 2014,
technical)

It should be clear, wiki search will not include docs - or knows someone
a trick?

But my conclusions whould be different from yours:

An recent entry for "Reconciliation" is missing in - both versions: wiki
and docs - of the glossary (your domain) with links to the respective
chapters.

Before you remove probably outdated text, you should create a proper text.

Your domain, because I am tired to explain after every edit e.g. the
relation between SheBang, MIME and GnuCash, it's helper scripts and
Windows failing to run them.

IMHO instead of overwriting it now, you should scan it for the keywords,
which are missing in the glossary and add sections there with links to
their documentation.

> Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and 
> since you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had 
> proposed to do (and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the Draft 
> Concept Guide issue directly. 

I was still waiting for your search expressions and there were more
important things in between like the finance.yahoo issue.

Now I tested your pattern "reconciliation gnucash" with google, yahoo
and bing and everywhere
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/txns-reconcile1.html
and other pages of docs/v2.6 were listed before
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_Guide_draft/
and as everybody knows drafts are not mandatory.

> I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do 
> that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to 
> replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers 
> have used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I 
> even made sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages, going 
> so far as to replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases of similar 
> length.

You overwrote the several linked images. Did you check their types: File
or Link?

If they were files, are they linked by something else or should they be
droppped, too?

This could later rise similar questions as in
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2017-October/041152.html

> Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages is 
> to serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for wiki 
> pages, my technique allowed these model pages to be retained *without* their 
> turning up in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s the best of both 
> worlds, right?
> 
> Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.

Yes, without breakfast I had to act. ;-)

I wonder, why you fill a

Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Hi,

Am 01.12.2017 um 04:55 schrieb David Thomas:
> Frank,
> 
> I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the 
> Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
> 
> As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a 
> half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they are out 
> of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up in search 
> results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and its features 
> and functions. 
> 
> In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the 
> Draft Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages, 
> although your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s 
> search algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note 
> that fixing one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER search 
> engine now or in the future from finding and returning these pages despite 
> your best intentions). 

I asked you for your search patterns, which resulted in that pages and
was still waiting for a response.

IIRC only the google bot is allowed to crawl the pages. Ask Derek for
robots.txt.

> You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John 
> noted that might not actually hide the results.
> 
> Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating 
> reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and when I 
> entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first 5 
> hits were for the Draft Concept Guide.

Thank you for this search pattern!

1x FAQ (a special case)
4x Concept Guide draft
2x Announcement (a minor change)
1x Project and Design Documentation (Casimonos approach from 2014,
technical)

It should be clear, wiki search will not include docs - or knows someone
a trick?

But my conclusions whould be different from yours:

An recent entry for "Reconciliation" is missing in - both versions: wiki
and docs - of the glossary (your domain) with links to the respective
chapters.

Before you remove probably outdated text, you should create a proper text.

Your domain, because I am tired to explain after every edit e.g. the
relation between SheBang, MIME and GnuCash, it's helper scripts and
Windows failing to run them.

IMHO instead of overwriting it now, you should scan it for the keywords,
which are missing in the glossary and add sections there with links to
their documentation.

> Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and 
> since you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had 
> proposed to do (and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the Draft 
> Concept Guide issue directly. 

I was still waiting for your search expressions and there were more
important things in between like the finance.yahoo issue.

Now I tested your pattern "reconciliation gnucash" with google, yahoo
and bing and everywhere
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/txns-reconcile1.html
and other pages of docs/v2.6 were listed before
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_Guide_draft/
and as everybody knows drafts are not mandatory.

> I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do 
> that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to 
> replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers 
> have used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I 
> even made sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages, going 
> so far as to replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases of similar 
> length.

You overwrote the several linked images. Did you check their types: File
or Link?

If they were files, are they linked by something else or should they be
droppped, too?

This could later rise similar questions as in
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2017-October/041152.html

> Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages is 
> to serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for wiki 
> pages, my technique allowed these model pages to be retained *without* their 
> turning up in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s the best of both 
> worlds, right?
> 
> Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.

Yes, without breakfast I had to act. ;-)

I wonder, why you fill an empty page (Loans) with 6k "Lore ipsum".

It was no pure reversion. But I needed some time to investigate Adriens
previous suggestion
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2017-November/041263.html
which resulted in a __NOINDEX__ in the template and a division
"'''This text is outdated.''' See https://wiki.gnucash.org/docs.phtml
for more recent versions."
This appears now on  the whole set of pages.

> So, I have a few questions to ask of you, Frank, and of the community.
> 
> 1) First, Frank: What 

Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Christian Stimming]

Dear all,

last time this issue was discussed, the majority of replies agreed to have 
those pages removed and that's it. Hence, I now put this into action and 
deleted those pages from the wiki. Thanks a lot!

Regards,

Christian

Am Freitag, 1. Dezember 2017, 16:22:19 schrieb Geert Janssens:
> David,
> 
> I agree this wasn't handled as it should have been. My apologies for that
> even though I'm not directly responsible for it.
> 
> I was and still am in favor of removing these pages and I appreciate the
> creative solution you applied as a compromise.
> 
> I don't know why Frank decided to revert your changes without any prior
> discussion or why he insists on keeping those pages around. I'll let him
> clarify that part.
> 
> I understand your desire for more clear procedures. I don't know what to
> propose unfortunately. On my own here I have been considering what kind of
> policy could work for a group of volunteers who choose to spend their free
> time on the project.
> 
> What we have now (a weak consensus based policy) has worked most of the
> time. But it falls flat as soon as a conflict arises. Is this out of fear
> of losing a precious volunteer or rather because the other volunteers
> prefer to focus on things they enjoy doing rather than resolving conflicts
> ? Perhaps a bit of both.
> 
> So what could work in a volunteer based community ? It should be something
> that takes little time and effort in general of all parties involved
> (volunteers don't have much time or energy to spare aside from the real
> contributions they want to make).
> 
> I'm open to suggestions at this point.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Geert
> 
> Op vrijdag 1 december 2017 04:57:38 CET schreef David T. via gnucash-devel:
> > Frank,
> > 
> > I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of
> > the Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
> > 
> > As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and
> > a half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they
> > are out of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up
> > in search results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and
> > its features and functions.
> > 
> > In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the
> > Draft Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages,
> > although your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s
> > search algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note
> > that fixing one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER
> > search engine now or in the future from finding and returning these pages
> > despite your best intentions).
> > 
> > You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John
> > noted that might not actually hide the results.
> > 
> > Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating
> > reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and
> > when
> > I entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first
> > 5
> > hits were for the Draft Concept Guide.
> > 
> > Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and
> > since you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had
> > proposed to do (and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the
> > Draft
> > Concept Guide issue directly.
> > 
> > I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do
> > that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to
> > replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers
> > have used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I
> > even made sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages,
> > going so far as to replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases
> > of
> > similar length.
> > 
> > Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages
> > is to serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for
> > wiki pages, my technique allowed these model pages to be retained
> > *without* their turning up in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s
> > the best of both worlds, right?
> > 
> > Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.
> > 
> > So, I have a few questions to ask of you, Frank, and of the community.
> > 
> > 1) First, Frank: What exactly is so special to you about these pages? Why
> > do you insist that they remain forever on the wiki? The only reason I
> > have heard from you is this idea that the pages could provide wiki page
> > template examples. But, my most recent changes preserved the template
> > aspect without retaining the problematic language—and you still reverted
> > the changes. So, there seems to be something *else* with these pages that
> > makes you feel so protective. What is it? My recent changes seem to prove
> > that there 

Re: gnucash.org vs. lists.gnucash.org [was: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?]

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 1, 2017, at 8:25 AM, D via gnucash-devel  
> wrote:
> 
> Certainly. I've just used what my mail program puts in.
> 
> On December 1, 2017, at 8:31 PM, Geert Janssens  
> wrote:
> 
> Oh, David,
> 
> Completely unrelated to this discussion... Can you use gnucash-
> de...@gnucash.org in the future as mail address for the list rather than 
> gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org ?
> 
> While both work the one without "list" in the domain is the one the list 
> manager itself promotes. When I do a reply-all on mails sent to gnucash-
> de...@lists.gnucash.org, my mailer automatically adds both addresses which 
> would make the list receive my message twice. I usually try to catch this 
> before I send the mails, but as with my previous mail I do miss it from time 
> to time...
> 

I've got a better and even weirder reason to prefer gnucash-devel@gnucash.org: 
When I send mail to gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org and route the mail through 
comcast.net (my ISP) the mail bounces because the terminal comcast
mail server won't talk to lists.gnucash.org. It's perfectly happy to talk to 
gnucash.org even though it's the same computer (the one we fondly refer to as 
"code"). That means I always have to check the CC when I reply-all to make sure 
it's the right address.

Regards,
John Ralls


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Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[D via gnucash-devel]

Certainly. I've just used what my mail program puts in.

On December 1, 2017, at 8:31 PM, Geert Janssens  
wrote:

Oh, David,

Completely unrelated to this discussion... Can you use gnucash-
de...@gnucash.org in the future as mail address for the list rather than 
gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org ?

While both work the one without "list" in the domain is the one the list 
manager itself promotes. When I do a reply-all on mails sent to gnucash-
de...@lists.gnucash.org, my mailer automatically adds both addresses which 
would make the list receive my message twice. I usually try to catch this 
before I send the mails, but as with my previous mail I do miss it from time 
to time...

Thanks!

Geert
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Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Geert Janssens]

Oh, David,

Completely unrelated to this discussion... Can you use gnucash-
de...@gnucash.org in the future as mail address for the list rather than 
gnucash-de...@lists.gnucash.org ?

While both work the one without "list" in the domain is the one the list 
manager itself promotes. When I do a reply-all on mails sent to gnucash-
de...@lists.gnucash.org, my mailer automatically adds both addresses which 
would make the list receive my message twice. I usually try to catch this 
before I send the mails, but as with my previous mail I do miss it from time 
to time...

Thanks!

Geert
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Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Geert Janssens]

David,

I agree this wasn't handled as it should have been. My apologies for that even 
though I'm not directly responsible for it.

I was and still am in favor of removing these pages and I appreciate the 
creative solution you applied as a compromise.

I don't know why Frank decided to revert your changes without any prior 
discussion or why he insists on keeping those pages around. I'll let him 
clarify that part.

I understand your desire for more clear procedures. I don't know what to 
propose unfortunately. On my own here I have been considering what kind of 
policy could work for a group of volunteers who choose to spend their free 
time on the project.

What we have now (a weak consensus based policy) has worked most of the time. 
But it falls flat as soon as a conflict arises. Is this out of fear of losing 
a precious volunteer or rather because the other volunteers prefer to focus on 
things they enjoy doing rather than resolving conflicts ? Perhaps a bit of 
both.

So what could work in a volunteer based community ? It should be something 
that takes little time and effort in general of all parties involved 
(volunteers don't have much time or energy to spare aside from the real 
contributions they want to make).

I'm open to suggestions at this point.

Regards,

Geert

Op vrijdag 1 december 2017 04:57:38 CET schreef David T. via gnucash-devel:
> Frank,
> 
> I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the
> Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
> 
> As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a
> half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they are
> out of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up in
> search results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and its
> features and functions.
> 
> In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the
> Draft Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages,
> although your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s
> search algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note
> that fixing one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER
> search engine now or in the future from finding and returning these pages
> despite your best intentions).
> 
> You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John
> noted that might not actually hide the results.
> 
> Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating
> reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and when
> I entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first 5
> hits were for the Draft Concept Guide.
> 
> Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and
> since you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had
> proposed to do (and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the Draft
> Concept Guide issue directly.
> 
> I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do
> that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to
> replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers
> have used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I
> even made sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages,
> going so far as to replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases of
> similar length.
> 
> Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages is
> to serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for wiki
> pages, my technique allowed these model pages to be retained *without*
> their turning up in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s the best of
> both worlds, right?
> 
> Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.
> 
> So, I have a few questions to ask of you, Frank, and of the community.
> 
> 1) First, Frank: What exactly is so special to you about these pages? Why do
> you insist that they remain forever on the wiki? The only reason I have
> heard from you is this idea that the pages could provide wiki page template
> examples. But, my most recent changes preserved the template aspect without
> retaining the problematic language—and you still reverted the changes. So,
> there seems to be something *else* with these pages that makes you feel so
> protective. What is it? My recent changes seem to prove that there is
> something in the text itself that you are attached to. Can you explain
> clearly what that attachment is?
> 
> 2) Frank, in the past, you have chastised me for reverting changes that you
> had made on wiki pages, and informed me that it is considered rude to do
> so. So, why are you so consistently rude to me? This is not the first time
> that you have reverted my changes.
> 
> 3) To the community: Whose Wiki is this, anyway? I have presented to the
> community on separate 

Re: GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[Adrien Monteleone]

David,

I recall replying to such a thread and being in agreement. Perhaps there was 
more than one.

I see no reason to keep out of date pages on a wiki. The entire purpose of a 
wiki is to be able to keep it up to date and to have multiple editors.

If a static info section is desired, then a basic HTML page can be used instead.

The wiki software has ‘templates’ as a feature. We can define our own. We don’t 
need to keep old pages around as ‘samples.’

As for ALL search engines, someone just needs to do two things:

1. remove ALL links TO the outdated pages if they will not be updated. 
(otherwise, just update them)
2. insert a NOFOLLOW rule in the robots.txt file for those pages. (again, only 
if they won’t be updated)

Optionally, a permanent redirect rule on those pages can be added to the 
.htaccess file for the site.

Doing all three would prevent any search engine from finding the pages. The 
only way they could be found is via a scraper or trying to hit the page 
directly via it’s URL - very unlikely.

If that’s still not enough. The pages or section in question could even be 
restricted with a DENY rule in .htaccess and limited only to certain IP 
addresses or people with a certain password. That way, even a scraper or 
someone entering the URL directly can’t see them unless they are so privileged.

But really, the pages should just be removed. A wiki is not a place for a 
‘working draft’ especially one that is so out of date. There are documentation 
procedures and a place for the working copy to be stored.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Nov 30, 2017, at 9:57 PM, David T. via gnucash-devel 
>  wrote:
> 
> Frank,
> 
> I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the 
> Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.
> 
> As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a 
> half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they are out 
> of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up in search 
> results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and its features 
> and functions. 
> 
> In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the 
> Draft Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages, 
> although your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s 
> search algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note 
> that fixing one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER search 
> engine now or in the future from finding and returning these pages despite 
> your best intentions). 
> 
> You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John 
> noted that might not actually hide the results.
> 
> Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating 
> reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and when I 
> entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first 5 
> hits were for the Draft Concept Guide.
> 
> Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and 
> since you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had 
> proposed to do (and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the Draft 
> Concept Guide issue directly. 
> 
> I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do 
> that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to 
> replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers 
> have used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I 
> even made sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages, going 
> so far as to replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases of similar 
> length.
> 
> Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages is 
> to serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for wiki 
> pages, my technique allowed these model pages to be retained *without* their 
> turning up in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s the best of both 
> worlds, right?
> 
> Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.
> 
> So, I have a few questions to ask of you, Frank, and of the community.
> 
> 1) First, Frank: What exactly is so special to you about these pages? Why do 
> you insist that they remain forever on the wiki? The only reason I have heard 
> from you is this idea that the pages could provide wiki page template 
> examples. But, my most recent changes preserved the template aspect without 
> retaining the problematic language—and you still reverted the changes. So, 
> there seems to be something *else* with these pages that makes you feel so 
> protective. What is it? My recent changes seem to prove that there is 
> something in the text itself that you are attached to. Can you explain 
> clearly what that attachment is?
> 
> 2) Frank, in the past, you have chastised me 

GnuCash Draft Concept Guide, or, Whose WIki Is This, Anyway?

[David T. via gnucash-devel]

Frank,

I am struggling right now to find the right way to bring up the issue of the 
Gnucash Draft Concept Guide, which still resides on the wiki.

As you know, I have proposed on numerous occasions (most recently, two and a 
half weeks ago) to have these pages removed from the wiki, since they are out 
of date, inaccurate, poorly written, superceded, and can turn up in search 
results, giving users incorrect information about Gnucash and its features and 
functions. 

In that recent thread, four people responded to my request to remove the Draft 
Concept Guide. Only you appeared to support retaining these pages, although 
your primary concern was with the mechanical aspects of Google’s search 
algorithm, upon which I have no expertise to comment. (I will note that fixing 
one search engine result set does not preclude some OTHER search engine now or 
in the future from finding and returning these pages despite your best 
intentions). 

You actually offered to move these pages to your own user area, but John noted 
that might not actually hide the results.

Two days ago, I went to the wiki to search for information about creating 
reconciliation reports in response to a question on the user list, and when I 
entered “reconciliation” into the wiki’s OWN search box, 4 of the first 5 hits 
were for the Draft Concept Guide.

Since there had been no support for your position to keep the pages, and since 
you had had two and a half weeks to take whatever action you had proposed to do 
(and not taken any), I felt it was time to address the Draft Concept Guide 
issue directly. 

I did not delete the pages outright (since I do not have the rights to do 
that), but I did what I considered to be the next best thing, which was to 
replace all the text in those pages with the latin nonsense that printers have 
used for hundreds of years to mock up page layouts (“Lorem ipsum”). I even made 
sure to retain the various structural elements in the pages, going so far as to 
replace headings and bullet points with latin phrases of similar length.

Since, as far as I understand, your only reason for retaining these pages is to 
serve as some sort of model for the Gnucash community to use for wiki pages, my 
technique allowed these model pages to be retained *without* their turning up 
in any search results, anywhere. So, that’s the best of both worlds, right?

Apparently not, as within hours, you had gone and reverted all my changes.

So, I have a few questions to ask of you, Frank, and of the community.

1) First, Frank: What exactly is so special to you about these pages? Why do 
you insist that they remain forever on the wiki? The only reason I have heard 
from you is this idea that the pages could provide wiki page template examples. 
But, my most recent changes preserved the template aspect without retaining the 
problematic language—and you still reverted the changes. So, there seems to be 
something *else* with these pages that makes you feel so protective. What is 
it? My recent changes seem to prove that there is something in the text itself 
that you are attached to. Can you explain clearly what that attachment is?

2) Frank, in the past, you have chastised me for reverting changes that you had 
made on wiki pages, and informed me that it is considered rude to do so. So, 
why are you so consistently rude to me? This is not the first time that you 
have reverted my changes.

3) To the community: Whose Wiki is this, anyway? I have presented to the 
community on separate occasions my reasons for wanting to remove these pages, 
and I have heard from most of the developer community that these pages could be 
removed. The only person opposed to this appears to be Frank. However, Frank’s 
wishes on this issue (and others regarding the Wiki) apparently take precedence 
over everyone else’s, such that if Frank doesn’t agree, then it won’t happen. 
That doesn’t sound much like a collaboration.

4) To the community: Again, I put the question to the group: what purpose and 
procedures are supposed to apply to the wiki? There appear to be numerous 
unwritten rules about how to engage with the process (see for example question 
2), and apparently I have broken those rules in this and other cases. It is 
frustrating to be encouraged to contribute to the wiki only to have those 
contributions rejected summarily. Establishing clear procedures and guidelines 
for contribution and workflow management seem to be in order—certainly if you 
expect non-developers to contribute back to the GnuCash community. 

Sincerely,
David T.
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