[CentOS-devel] What to do with wiki.centos.org ? (let's discuss it)

Thu Aug 25 15:32:15 UTC 2022
Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org>

On 25/08/2022 16:10, Trevor Hemsley via CentOS-devel wrote:
> On 25/08/2022 15:28, Robby Callicotte via CentOS-devel wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 25, 2022 8:46:18 AM CDT Neal Gompa wrote:
>>> I second this. Our quick docs could use MkDocs like the SIG stuff
>>> does, and the RHELish stuff can use the Antora system the RHEL docs
>>> folks want to use.
>> I agree with Neal here.  This seems to offer a good balance.  At this 
>> point I
>> would argue that the MR/PR nature of git is ubiquitous and is part of
>> everyone's workflow.
> 
> So far I've seen lots of "yes, use this" type comments so I'd like to 
> ask how this compares in user friendliness to the current wiki (assuming 
> that you can get to it because the spammers are taking a rest). I've 
> never used any of the alternatives that have been proposed so far. Are 
> they wikis? Are they usable for a non-technical user? The wiki, you 
> press a button and you can edit content directly and see what it will 
> look like before you save it. You can link to other pages easily, you 
> can format content how you want it easily, often just at the press of a 
> button.
> 
> None of what I've heard so far sounds even remotely as usable as what we 
> have now.
> 
> Trevor

I agree.

Git-type work flows, pull and merge requests may be second nature to 
those working within Red Hat, or other developers, but they are not 
familiar technologies to most non-technical, regular users.

The Wiki has served as a key point of entry for contributing to the 
CentOS project for non-technical users for exactly the reasons Trevor 
highlights. A user can easily read and follow the documentation 
presented on the Wiki, and can easily update it to fix any errors they 
may encounter at the press of a button. If we lose that ability then we 
lose a valuable entry point for new contributors to the project.

And lets not forget - developers do not write (or maintain) web-based 
documentation. That is the reason documentation sucks on most open 
source projects - developers want to do cool stuff, not spend all their 
time writing documentation. So lets not give too much weight to the 
opinions of those who have never contributed anything to the Wiki.

Fabian - please can you give us stats for the top contributors so we can 
seek and appropriately weigh their opinions?

Thanks