Squeakapedia?! (reply to Ralph)

"Try something. If that doesn't work. Try something else."  
--The only way I know to program. -Jer


In response to my original post:
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-June/151287.html

>Ralph Johnson johnson at cs.uiuc.edu
Tue Jun 15 10:13:28 UTC 2010 wrote:

>So, what is wrong with the Squeak wiki?  Why isn't it used as much?

Ummm. That was NOT the question.

In the context of the original:

Problem:
Documentation of squeak and varients is a bear to find in an organized fashion.

The question I raised is who out there is willing to help solve this problem?

Answering as you have I am hurt. It was both out of context, off thread, and essentially of the tone:

Things are bad lets (implicitly) keep them that way.

In source documentation is a good idea. I've tried lots of it. When I fixed things with change sets I wrote extensive prologs which guided me and others as long as prologs were included in the source. MC broke that. Plus the prologs got jettisoned as bath water from time to time anyway.

MC allows comments. But you never see them all in one place at one time. Another loss of knowledge. You had a student who was working on making a database of previous version of methods. He finished his project and disappeared. The database for 3.9 or 3.10 never was created. You never followed up on that. So no database of versions exists. I miss that diagnostic tool because it was the only way to find out which fool introduced which bug.

Mediawiki's are everywhere. Swiki is in only one place. That tells several things. First off, many more people out there know how to edit a mediawiki. We could carry on this mailing list in Esperanto but we use English because we are familiar with it. Language is not a local phenomenon. Nor are flavor of wikis.

So I need to ask again. In the context of the original problem is there anyone out there willing to help with a solution that includes using a Mediawiki?

Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace






     

I don't understand how what you are proposing is any different from
starting another Squeak wiki.  To me, it is exactly the same.  You
must think it is different.  So, how do you think it is different?

-Ralph

--- On Wed, 6/16/10, Ralph Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

[squeak-dev] Re: Squeakapedia?! (reply to Ralph)
>Ralph Johnson johnson at cs.uiuc.edu
>Wed Jun 16 22:41:00 UTC 2010 wrote:
>
>
>I don't understand how what you are proposing is any different from
>starting another Squeak wiki.  To me, it is exactly the same.  You
>must think it is different.  So, how do you think it is different?
>
>-Ralph

Yes. And for that reason I do not think my post was aimed at you. I am trying to reach those who have the experience to understand why the difference is important.
To find out if my idea can receive help.

For the last year as a fan of a certain web comic I have been editing comments and templates on a wikia web farm. That has tought me the difference and power of a mediawiki environment over the current squeak wiki environment. IMO it is enough of a difference to be worth a try.

First mediawiki will get maintained and upgraded outside of the small squeak community regardless of whether the time pressed members of this community will put hard pressed time into it.

Second wikipedia and other media based wiki's have a track record of growth and success. That should tell you something.

Thirdly, the fan site was fun to visit, follow and contribute to. Once our swiki was too. The swiki as YOU mention was good. It, as Karl mentioned, was not good enough to be fun. Especially as everyone agreed to stop using it.

Try something. If it doesn't work, try something else. The difference in tools is IMO interesting enough to have a mediawiki base system be a something else worth trying.

What I would like to see is this.

Parts of squeak documented and defined. The overall organization. The demo's and examples.

People in this community become exposed to a proven model of organizing an encyclopedic amount of information. Wikipedea is a good model of successful documentation.

A place where accurate, precise, and up to date technical information can accumulate and persist. A place that can be tapped by the in source documenters.

A place where aside from that articles can be written to help guide someone coming at squeak from a users point of view. Where the users can guide the content of those articles with their questions.

A place where each platforms point of view can be addressed.

A place where articles can be tagged and categorized so that the information is discoverable.

A mediawiki has the tools to make the creation of those things doable, easy, and somewhat fun. The swiki lacks those tools.

I hope what I have written starts to answer your question. Now please give my questions some space to find their true audience.

Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace