[D-community-discuss] knowledge base structure

[Chris Lale]

Nico Dietrich wrote:
> [...]
>
> It's about building a knowledge base in an accessible way. The contents could 
> be something like the contents of the Ubuntu-Wiki. 
>
> [...]
>
>
>  / i have a problem
>     / hardware doesn't work
>       / it's about graphics
>       / something with the network
>       / da printa
>       well, first off, printers suck! that said, 
>
>     / i'm missing a program
>       / graphics
>         / raster (something like photoshop)  .. gimp, krita ..
>        
> [...]

This is a great idea, Nico.

> [...]
>
> About the question "own wiki or wiki.debian.org" I'd go for an own wiki first 
> (and link to content on the debian-wiki) to allow more experiments (like the 
> stuff above). 

I think that the project having its own wiki is the right idea. You can 
develop it the way you want as demands change. Anything you need from 
debian-wiki (or anywhere else) can be done with links.

 From my experience setting up the NewbieDOC wiki 
(http://newbiedoc.berlios.de), I would say that these are some of the 
main issues:

1. Which licence(s) to use?

2. Which wiki software provides the needed features?
Is the wiki geared up for the automatic licencing of submissions, is it 
possible to set up the required structure, is it easy to patrol for new 
submissions, modifications, spam, etc, is there a way of dealing with 
spambots, are there different levels of administrative access, does the 
wiki support email and RSS,  is the markup simple, is the markup 
comprehensive enough, is it possible to protect particular pages, is it 
possible to use wiki pages to ask and answer questions, is the software 
W3C standards compliant, what about backup?

3. Where is a suitable hosting service?
Some Free software project hosters do not cater for own wiki software eg 
SourceForge, Alioth. There are issues with server requirements (eg are 
recent enough versions of MySQL or PHP available?) and with server 
security (eg does the wiki need write access for visitors, ability to 
send email, etc).

We would need to compare different wiki software on local machines 
first, then choose one, then find a way to host it.

> Later both wikis should be merged to avoid redundancy. 
>   

Merging different project wikis would require the agreement of both 
projects and would raise a lot of issues. It may not be the best thing 
to do.

I would also say that it would be good if the wiki could feed into a 
Debian package of documentation. The current  "newbiedoc" package is a 
collection of (outdated) articles as webpages. Perhaps a d-community 
package could be more like a read-only snapshot of the wiki - possibly 
HTML, PDF, DVI, or possibly in a desktop wiki such as Zim? Zim would be 
great for any desktop user wanting instant information, but not so good 
for CLI users.

-- 
Chris.