On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Matthew Orgass wrote:

> On 2006-01-01 abs@NetBSD.org wrote:
>>  	The important aspect is that it allows more people to become
>>  	involved. It may work well for some ports but not others, or may
>>  	even not work at all, but I believe it is very much worth trying.
>
>  Stale ports generally have slow mailing lists, so it isn't hard to find
> information that is posted.  IMO, it is counterproductive to get users
> more involved separately when patches to source go ignored due to lack of
> developer attention.

 	So a potential new user of a 'stale' port should browse through
 	the mail archives for their port to discover the issues they
 	may find when trying to install or use the port, when they have
 	no idea for what they should be looking? Specifically, they should
 	do this when there are poeple willing to maintain a page, and
 	in some cases already maintaining a webpage with the information
 	they require?

 	If adding a wiki reduced the quality of the website, or reduced
 	the amount of developer attention devoted to dealing with PRs
 	then it would be a bad thing, but a wiki is likely to be
 	maintained by those who do not have developer access.

 	Most important point for last...

 	"More users getting involved" is a bad thing? If a port maintainer
 	is not fielding PRs then those users are likely to start keeping
 	lists of useful patches and workarounds on the wiki for other
 	users, which makes the port easier to use and encourages more
 	users. Somes of those users are quite likely to become developers.

 	The main risk for setting up a wiki is that is is not maintained,
 	and that it ends up being vandalised, in which case we shut it
 	down.



-- 
 		David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --