Hi, > > So... serious question: why not help schmonz get wiki.netbsd.org ready > > to where it needs to be? > > Yeah, that's the right question to ask, and not with the intent to > scold those who'd rather go through the pain to create an open, > user-driven wiki, but with the intent to step back a moment and > wonder why the invitation "All you need is an OpenID to participate" > (obviously!) isn't good enough, triggering people to contemplate > going through more pain than the claimed hurdle for participating > in the netbsd driven wiki. the problem is "All you need is an OpenID" being plainly wrong. You currently (and for the last six months) cannot get a user account. Don't ask me for details, I don't know them myself. So, why don't I help schmonz? I'm just not that into perl, and I don't have (nor want to invest) time in learning it just to push that wiki. And setting up a new one and caring for it takes less time than helping developing the new one. And if not, the time is more distributed. Clarification of the organizational stuff is a mail per evening for a few days or weeks, setting it up one or two days, and cleaning up is a few tens of minutes every day. The other point is that there is imho a lack of time. I think, before 6.0 release, there should be a user wiki. There will be major attention on NetBSD when the announcement is released, and the possibility to attract users and contributors when having some kind of wiki is imho greater than without. I doubt that even if I helped, we'd be able to push it in time. Imho, a larger Open Source project *needs* a wiki or another method for users to contribute documentation, especially tutorials etc. Then, there seem to be legal issues (as Thor Lancelot Simon pointed out) about TNF hosting a user wiki, though I didn't really get that. And, another point I really dislike about the targeted wiki solution is the differentiation between developers (creating the content) and users posting comments. I'm sure this will generate a large lack of commits, and user articles will stay in the comments forever. If you don't want users moderating the content, developers will have to spend effort and time in the wiki. Plus, I think it's not enough credits for users spending time in writing articles, but ending up on a discussion page. Anyway, I could live with these issues (though I think the last one is a major issue you really should think about). But as long as you cannot say that the new user wiki will be up and running at a specific date (and stick to that date) not too far in the future, I consider setting up a second wiki as the best solution. Regards, Julian
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