Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Andrej Mitrovic]

On 3/7/12, Brad Anderson  wrote:
> - Do we even want a moderated wiki? Given the current state of the wiki it
> could be a good thing but given the current rate of pull request merging it
> could be a bad thing.

FWIW pull requests for dpl.org seem to be merged much faster than
pulls for phobos/dmd. There are still a few pulls left that are quite
old, but these are either waiting for implementation changes or still
have some bugs that need fixing.

Personally I'd wholeheartedly welcome an integrated wiki to the site,
having all information in one place is great for newcomers, and we
would finally have an incentive to reorganize and update information
from the old wiki.

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Brad Anderson]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Justin C Calvarese
wrote:

> On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 14:43:59 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>
>> On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
>>>
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D
 wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information and
 entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/**wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby)

 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the
 newsgroup), what is?

>>>
>>> If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the
>>> reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to
>>> make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.
>>>
>>
>> That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new information to
>> the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it requires someone to be able
>> to determine that information is outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and to be
>> able to correct it (in case the correction is not as simple as deleting,
>> but rather fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error in the
>> information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as it implies
>> "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does not always know if
>> that is appropriate.
>>
>> I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of process
>> set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have a more managed,
>> distilled version, that would be of use for newcomers. Indeed, it seems to
>> me there is an important separation between some pages, those that are more
>> discussion like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved members of
>> the D community, and other pages which are quite important for beginners
>> (like the Editors page and others linked from dlang.org), to offer a
>> Getting-Started kind of information.
>>
>
> Responding as someone who used to be much more involved in the D Wiki (I
> don't do much anymore due to having less time available), I think that a
> new wiki should be set up as a dlang.org subdomain. We don't have to
> write the wiki software in D, we could use a popular existing package (such
> as MediaWiki, Trac, GitHub, etc.). I'm sure we could generate a centithread
> of discussion about the pros and cons of different wiki software.
>
> The current wiki was generously set up by an individual who donated server
> space and wiki software for the D community to use many years ago, but I
> don't believe that person would be offended if we migrated to another
> system. We should only migrate the most important pages first (and as we
> migrate pages, we could indicate on the old page where the new page is).
> We'd only migrate pages that are already largely up-to-date and that we
> intend to maintain. The less useful pages would probably never get migrated
> to the new site, but the information on those pages may still be of use to
> someone on the old site.
>
> As someone who created many of these pages that are now outdated or
> obsolete, I'd hate to see them all disappear due to a wave of deletionism
> from newer members of the D community who have more time for deleting than
> updating.
>
> That's my idea, but I don't have time to implement it myself (I would be
> willing to help), but maybe someone else will get inspired to make
> something like this happen.
>
> jcc7
>

One option, and I don't even know how I feel about this, could actually
make it powered by D (Ddoc specifically).  I have a pull request <
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/d-programming-language.org/pull/98>
which enables website pages to be edited and a pull request made all online
(it's basically a moderated wiki).

Extending that by creating a wiki repository with appropriate moderators
and adding that to the website is how it'd probably work.  Anyone with a
github account could modify pages. One nice thing is that it'd match the
look and feel of the current website and would easily integrate with all
sections of it.  Syntax highlighting would work and references to
documentation would be trivial.

There are issues though.
- Do we even want a moderated wiki? Given the current state of the wiki it
could be a good thing but given the current rate of pull request merging it
could be a bad thing.
- It would require frequent ddoc generation and deployment by someone
(Andrei, from my understanding of website deployment).  A script could
probably be written to monitor for commits and do this automatically but
it's certainly more complicated than an off the shelf wiki.
- Not many people actually know ddoc syntax.  It's not that complicated to
figure out but it's something to keep in mind.
- New pages could not be created using the online editor.  You'd have to
clone the repository and add the new page by hand.

Anyway, it's just something I thought I

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Justin C Calvarese]

On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 14:43:59 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:

On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:

On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. 
The D
wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information 
and

entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
(besides the

newsgroup), what is?


If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove 
the

reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to
make it better, and removing useless information is part of 
that.


That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new 
information to the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it 
requires someone to be able to determine that information is 
outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and to be able to correct it (in 
case the correction is not as simple as deleting, but rather 
fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error in the 
information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as 
it implies "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does 
not always know if that is appropriate.


I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of 
process set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have 
a more managed, distilled version, that would be of use for 
newcomers. Indeed, it seems to me there is an important 
separation between some pages, those that are more discussion 
like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved members of 
the D community, and other pages which are quite important for 
beginners (like the Editors page and others linked from 
dlang.org), to offer a Getting-Started kind of information.


Responding as someone who used to be much more involved in the D 
Wiki (I don't do much anymore due to having less time available), 
I think that a new wiki should be set up as a dlang.org 
subdomain. We don't have to write the wiki software in D, we 
could use a popular existing package (such as MediaWiki, Trac, 
GitHub, etc.). I'm sure we could generate a centithread of 
discussion about the pros and cons of different wiki software.


The current wiki was generously set up by an individual who 
donated server space and wiki software for the D community to use 
many years ago, but I don't believe that person would be offended 
if we migrated to another system. We should only migrate the most 
important pages first (and as we migrate pages, we could indicate 
on the old page where the new page is). We'd only migrate pages 
that are already largely up-to-date and that we intend to 
maintain. The less useful pages would probably never get migrated 
to the new site, but the information on those pages may still be 
of use to someone on the old site.


As someone who created many of these pages that are now outdated 
or obsolete, I'd hate to see them all disappear due to a wave of 
deletionism from newer members of the D community who have more 
time for deleting than updating.


That's my idea, but I don't have time to implement it myself (I 
would be willing to help), but maybe someone else will get 
inspired to make something like this happen.


jcc7

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:

On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:

I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D
wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information and
entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the
newsgroup), what is?


If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the
reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to
make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.


That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new information to 
the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it requires someone to be 
able to determine that information is outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and 
to be able to correct it (in case the correction is not as simple as 
deleting, but rather fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error 
in the information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as it 
implies "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does not always 
know if that is appropriate.


I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of process 
set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have a more managed, 
distilled version, that would be of use for newcomers. Indeed, it seems 
to me there is an important separation between some pages, those that 
are more discussion like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved 
members of the D community, and other pages which are quite important 
for beginners (like the Editors page and others linked from dlang.org), 
to offer a Getting-Started kind of information.



--
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Jesse Phillips]

On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. 
The D wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated 
information and entries that are more talk pages than actual 
entries (e.g. 
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )


If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
(besides the newsgroup), what is?


If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the
reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to
make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.

There are however a few good pages in there, but the comingFrom
section hasn't been getting any attention.

If you know Ruby and continue to learn D, it would be great if
the page were updated.

As mentioned Dlang.org is the official documentation, and is on
github for pull requests, bugs are reported to

http://d.puremagic.com/issues/

PS

I would actually like to have you continue to use the wiki and
see what else you find, you can send complaints directly to me
and I'll try to make use of that information to make it better.
(I can organize my email, and can't organize the newsgroup)

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, March 02, 2012 12:41:55 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 08:54:26PM +0100, Vadim Goryunov wrote:
> > Should not at least library reference be automatically generated
> > from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?
> 
> AFAIK, the library docs on dlang.org are generated from ddocs in the
> source.

Yes. The library documentation on dlang.org is generated with ddoc from the 
druntime and Phobos source code. The rest is all part of the d-programming-
language.org project on github.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, March 02, 2012 12:00:39 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Robert Rouse"  wrote in message
> news:arfpdcbasynmuzzsf...@forum.dlang.org...
> 
> > I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D wiki
> > linked from the D site has so much outdated information and entries that
> > are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
> > http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )
> 
> That's a good point. We should probably be more dilligent with the Wiki than
> we have been. :/

Honestly, I keep forgetting that the thing exists.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[F i L]

If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
(besides the newsgroup), what is?


I found the IRC to be a great help at times. #d on freenode

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 08:54:26PM +0100, Vadim Goryunov wrote:
> Should not at least library reference be automatically generated
> from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?

AFAIK, the library docs on dlang.org are generated from ddocs in the
source.


T

-- 
All problems are easy in retrospect.

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Vadim Goryunov]

Should not at least library reference be automatically generated 
from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Andrej Mitrovic]

Well the quality and freshness of the wiki content really depends on
volunteer effort. I suspect it's going to be kept more up-to-date as
more contributors start coming in. I hope we get an even better wiki
some day, e.g. something with better spam protection and nicer
formatting and looks.

We should make Vladimir create a wiki engine in D. :P

Re: D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Robert Rouse"  wrote in message 
news:arfpdcbasynmuzzsf...@forum.dlang.org...
> I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D wiki 
> linked from the D site has so much outdated information and entries that 
> are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g. 
> http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )
>

That's a good point. We should probably be more dilligent with the Wiki than 
we have been. :/

> If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the 
> newsgroup), what is?

dlang.org

D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

[Robert Rouse]

I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The 
D wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information 
and entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g. 
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )


If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides 
the newsgroup), what is?