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digitalmars.D - D Wiki - Why is it in such shambles?

reply "Robert Rouse" <robert.e.rouse gmail.com> writes:
I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The 
D wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information 
and entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g. 
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides 
the newsgroup), what is?
Mar 02 2012
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Robert Rouse" <robert.e.rouse gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:arfpdcbasynmuzzsfxjm forum.dlang.org...
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D wiki 
 linked from the D site has so much outdated information and entries that 
 are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g. 
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )
That's a good point. We should probably be more dilligent with the Wiki than we have been. :/
 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the 
 newsgroup), what is?
dlang.org
Mar 02 2012
next sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
Well the quality and freshness of the wiki content really depends on
volunteer effort. I suspect it's going to be kept more up-to-date as
more contributors start coming in. I hope we get an even better wiki
some day, e.g. something with better spam protection and nicer
formatting and looks.

We should make Vladimir create a wiki engine in D. :P
Mar 02 2012
parent reply "Vadim Goryunov" <vadim.goryunov gmail.com> writes:
Should not at least library reference be automatically generated 
from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?
Mar 02 2012
next sibling parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 08:54:26PM +0100, Vadim Goryunov wrote:
 Should not at least library reference be automatically generated
 from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?
AFAIK, the library docs on dlang.org are generated from ddocs in the source. T -- All problems are easy in retrospect.
Mar 02 2012
prev sibling parent "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, March 02, 2012 12:41:55 H. S. Teoh wrote:
 On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 08:54:26PM +0100, Vadim Goryunov wrote:
 Should not at least library reference be automatically generated
 from code basing on D doc (similar to Javadoc)?
AFAIK, the library docs on dlang.org are generated from ddocs in the source.
Yes. The library documentation on dlang.org is generated with ddoc from the druntime and Phobos source code. The rest is all part of the d-programming- language.org project on github. - Jonathan M Davis
Mar 02 2012
prev sibling parent "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Friday, March 02, 2012 12:00:39 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Robert Rouse" <robert.e.rouse gmail.com> wrote in message
 news:arfpdcbasynmuzzsfxjm forum.dlang.org...
 
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D wiki
 linked from the D site has so much outdated information and entries that
 are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )
That's a good point. We should probably be more dilligent with the Wiki than we have been. :/
Honestly, I keep forgetting that the thing exists. - Jonathan M Davis
Mar 02 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent "F i L" <witte2008 gmail.com> writes:
 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
 (besides the newsgroup), what is?
I found the IRC to be a great help at times. #d on freenode
Mar 02 2012
prev sibling parent reply "Jesse Phillips" <jessekphillips+D gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. 
 The D wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated 
 information and entries that are more talk pages than actual 
 entries (e.g. 
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
 (besides the newsgroup), what is?
If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to make it better, and removing useless information is part of that. There are however a few good pages in there, but the comingFrom section hasn't been getting any attention. If you know Ruby and continue to learn D, it would be great if the page were updated. As mentioned Dlang.org is the official documentation, and is on github for pull requests, bugs are reported to http://d.puremagic.com/issues/ PS I would actually like to have you continue to use the wiki and see what else you find, you can send complaints directly to me and I'll try to make use of that information to make it better. (I can organize my email, and can't organize the newsgroup)
Mar 02 2012
parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+dng gmail.com> writes:
On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:
 On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D
 wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information and
 entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the
 newsgroup), what is?
If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.
That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new information to the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it requires someone to be able to determine that information is outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and to be able to correct it (in case the correction is not as simple as deleting, but rather fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error in the information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as it implies "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does not always know if that is appropriate. I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of process set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have a more managed, distilled version, that would be of use for newcomers. Indeed, it seems to me there is an important separation between some pages, those that are more discussion like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved members of the D community, and other pages which are quite important for beginners (like the Editors page and others linked from dlang.org), to offer a Getting-Started kind of information. -- Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
Mar 07 2012
parent reply "Justin C Calvarese" <jccalvarese+d gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 14:43:59 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
 On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:
 On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:
 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. 
 The D
 wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information 
 and
 entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby )

 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information 
 (besides the
 newsgroup), what is?
If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.
That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new information to the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it requires someone to be able to determine that information is outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and to be able to correct it (in case the correction is not as simple as deleting, but rather fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error in the information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as it implies "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does not always know if that is appropriate. I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of process set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have a more managed, distilled version, that would be of use for newcomers. Indeed, it seems to me there is an important separation between some pages, those that are more discussion like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved members of the D community, and other pages which are quite important for beginners (like the Editors page and others linked from dlang.org), to offer a Getting-Started kind of information.
Responding as someone who used to be much more involved in the D Wiki (I don't do much anymore due to having less time available), I think that a new wiki should be set up as a dlang.org subdomain. We don't have to write the wiki software in D, we could use a popular existing package (such as MediaWiki, Trac, GitHub, etc.). I'm sure we could generate a centithread of discussion about the pros and cons of different wiki software. The current wiki was generously set up by an individual who donated server space and wiki software for the D community to use many years ago, but I don't believe that person would be offended if we migrated to another system. We should only migrate the most important pages first (and as we migrate pages, we could indicate on the old page where the new page is). We'd only migrate pages that are already largely up-to-date and that we intend to maintain. The less useful pages would probably never get migrated to the new site, but the information on those pages may still be of use to someone on the old site. As someone who created many of these pages that are now outdated or obsolete, I'd hate to see them all disappear due to a wave of deletionism from newer members of the D community who have more time for deleting than updating. That's my idea, but I don't have time to implement it myself (I would be willing to help), but maybe someone else will get inspired to make something like this happen. jcc7
Mar 07 2012
next sibling parent Brad Anderson <eco gnuk.net> writes:
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Justin C Calvarese
<jccalvarese+d gmail.com>wrote:

 On Wednesday, 7 March 2012 at 14:43:59 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:

 On 03/03/2012 01:55, Jesse Phillips wrote:

 On Friday, 2 March 2012 at 14:49:54 UTC, Robert Rouse wrote:

 I'm relatively new to D, so I'm looking at everything I can. The D
 wiki linked from the D site has so much outdated information and
 entries that are more talk pages than actual entries (e.g.
 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/**wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby<http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?ComingFrom/Ruby>)

 If that wiki is not the best place to go for information (besides the
 newsgroup), what is?
If you do not find the page helpful, please delete it/remove the reference to it. The wiki works best when someone is willing to make it better, and removing useless information is part of that.
That's a tricky thing to do. While it's easy to add new information to the wiki, removing it is not as clear-cut: it requires someone to be able to determine that information is outdated/incorrect/obsolete, and to be able to correct it (in case the correction is not as simple as deleting, but rather fixing some entry). And even so, unless the error in the information is glaring, people might be reticent to do it, as it implies "interfering" with someone else's work, and one does not always know if that is appropriate. I also generally agree it would be better to have some sort of process set up around the wiki. Curate it in some way, or have a more managed, distilled version, that would be of use for newcomers. Indeed, it seems to me there is an important separation between some pages, those that are more discussion like, or more relevant only to experienced/involved members of the D community, and other pages which are quite important for beginners (like the Editors page and others linked from dlang.org), to offer a Getting-Started kind of information.
Responding as someone who used to be much more involved in the D Wiki (I don't do much anymore due to having less time available), I think that a new wiki should be set up as a dlang.org subdomain. We don't have to write the wiki software in D, we could use a popular existing package (such as MediaWiki, Trac, GitHub, etc.). I'm sure we could generate a centithread of discussion about the pros and cons of different wiki software. The current wiki was generously set up by an individual who donated server space and wiki software for the D community to use many years ago, but I don't believe that person would be offended if we migrated to another system. We should only migrate the most important pages first (and as we migrate pages, we could indicate on the old page where the new page is). We'd only migrate pages that are already largely up-to-date and that we intend to maintain. The less useful pages would probably never get migrated to the new site, but the information on those pages may still be of use to someone on the old site. As someone who created many of these pages that are now outdated or obsolete, I'd hate to see them all disappear due to a wave of deletionism from newer members of the D community who have more time for deleting than updating. That's my idea, but I don't have time to implement it myself (I would be willing to help), but maybe someone else will get inspired to make something like this happen. jcc7
One option, and I don't even know how I feel about this, could actually make it powered by D (Ddoc specifically). I have a pull request < https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/d-programming-language.org/pull/98> which enables website pages to be edited and a pull request made all online (it's basically a moderated wiki). Extending that by creating a wiki repository with appropriate moderators and adding that to the website is how it'd probably work. Anyone with a github account could modify pages. One nice thing is that it'd match the look and feel of the current website and would easily integrate with all sections of it. Syntax highlighting would work and references to documentation would be trivial. There are issues though. - Do we even want a moderated wiki? Given the current state of the wiki it could be a good thing but given the current rate of pull request merging it could be a bad thing. - It would require frequent ddoc generation and deployment by someone (Andrei, from my understanding of website deployment). A script could probably be written to monitor for commits and do this automatically but it's certainly more complicated than an off the shelf wiki. - Not many people actually know ddoc syntax. It's not that complicated to figure out but it's something to keep in mind. - New pages could not be created using the online editor. You'd have to clone the repository and add the new page by hand. Anyway, it's just something I thought I'd bring up as an option. Regardless of this, I definitely think we should move it to wiki.dlang.org, match the look of the current website, and institute quality/accuracy checks. On the wxWidget's wiki they would put something along the lines of "Information last reviewed for accuracy on <date>" up at the top of certain pages so users can easily see if information could be old and inaccurate. I believe that's a good idea to integrate into whatever we end up doing (even if it's just stay with the current wiki). Regards, Brad Anderson
Mar 07 2012
prev sibling parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 3/7/12, Brad Anderson <eco gnuk.net> wrote:
 - Do we even want a moderated wiki? Given the current state of the wiki it
 could be a good thing but given the current rate of pull request merging it
 could be a bad thing.
FWIW pull requests for dpl.org seem to be merged much faster than pulls for phobos/dmd. There are still a few pulls left that are quite old, but these are either waiting for implementation changes or still have some bugs that need fixing. Personally I'd wholeheartedly welcome an integrated wiki to the site, having all information in one place is great for newcomers, and we would finally have an incentive to reorganize and update information from the old wiki.
Mar 07 2012