[Python-Dev] Python wiki (original) (raw)

anatoly techtonik techtonik at gmail.com
Sat Sep 25 10:20:22 CEST 2010

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 1:27 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

 Antoine> Given that few or none of us seem to (want to) actively  Antoine> contribute to the wiki, I'm afraid python-dev is not the place  Antoine> to ask.  Perhaps a call should be issued on c.l.py ... It would be nice if you could actually send messages to the people who do actually update wiki content.  Unfortunately, without donning my cape and blue tights, then digging into the users files on the wiki there's no real way to do that.

That's bad. I'd really like to see the amount of my contributions so far. How about recording a session on MoinMoin hacking and drafting an upgrade plan? Who's gonna be the driver?

That's a good point actually... why isn't there a pydotorg-wiki-sig? (Aside from the obvious point of nobody ever asking for one).

Because Yet Another Mailing List doesn't solve the problem. If you need one - go Google Groups like packaging folks did. Python ML are:

  1. require dedicated admin to update, who is not a member of the group
  2. don't have search
  3. don't have optional thread subscription That's already enough to seek better platform for collaboration.

I must admit, that the various things I've thrown on there myself have been pretty much fire-and-forget. Without anyone that feels like they collectively "own" the wiki, the much needed pruning never happens.

Community can perfectly manage the stuff without dedicated admins if there is a gameplay in it. I am doing the wiki works when I am redirected to outdated wiki pages from search. But I do it only if it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes, and if I can remember the password (and I know where an edit button is).

My advice - subscribe people editing page by default (a checkbox near submit button). This way more people will receive notifications when a page is changed and will be more interested to contribute themselves. Of course, there must be a setting to opt out.

With an admin team behind it, you can also make more use of ACLs to flag certain parts of the wiki as "official" by making them only editable by certain people (e.g. only devs, only the triage team, only the wiki admins). But keeping those user lists up to date is itself something that requires a strong wiki admin team.

That's a dead way. Wiki should be open for everyone. Just need more people subscribed to revert unwelcome changes. That is to make timeline more visible, because on wiki.python.org it is not intuitive. It may worth to see how Mercurial wiki is managed - I've picked up the bookmarks monitoring habit from it. Maybe a design change will help, but again - there is no entrypoint for people with design skills to start.

A lot of problems. All on the surface. Mailing list won't help. What's next?

anatoly t.

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