Developer's Wiki

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:33:41PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:

I have now moved the wiki installation to:

http://developer.postgresql.org/

Ok, it looks like pages can be arranged hierarchically.

It would seems like pages named:

Todo:<todo topic>

would be a good idea for detailed info on todo items (and progress
info). With

Todo:Contents

being a front page?

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

Sounds reasonable to me.

Regards, Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: "Martijn van Oosterhout" <kleptog@svana.org>
To: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org; "PostgreSQL WWW" <pgsql-www@postgresql.org>
Sent: 02/09/06 23:08
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Developer's Wiki

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:33:41PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:

I have now moved the wiki installation to:

http://developer.postgresql.org/

Ok, it looks like pages can be arranged hierarchically.

It would seems like pages named:

Todo:<todo topic>

would be a good idea for detailed info on todo items (and progress
info). With

Todo:Contents

being a front page?

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 11:46:12PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:

Sounds reasonable to me.

Ok, I've typed some stuff in here:

http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Todo:Contents
http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Todo:Collate

Is this the kind of thing people are expecting?

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

Martijn van Oosterhout said:

Ok, it looks like pages can be arranged hierarchically.

Well, a prefix like "Todo:" is not the incantation one needs to use to
arrange pages in hierarchies. You probably want "/" to indicate a subpage:
i.e. "Parent/Child". See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Link#Subpage_feature

It would seems like pages named:

Todo:<todo topic>

would be a good idea for detailed info on todo items (and progress
info).

I suggest you just give pages names that describe the content of the page,
and then have a category for all the pages that constitute TODO items.
See:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Category

-Neil

On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 08:30:13PM -0700, Neil Conway wrote:

Martijn van Oosterhout said:

Ok, it looks like pages can be arranged hierarchically.

Well, a prefix like "Todo:" is not the incantation one needs to use to
arrange pages in hierarchies. You probably want "/" to indicate a subpage:
i.e. "Parent/Child". See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Link#Subpage_feature

It also says it's not enabled by default. Is it enabled?

I was actually hoping for more feedback on the content itself. I'm
still not clear if it's supposed to be "developers only - to the
exclusion of users" or "developers only - but accessable to anyone".

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

Martjin,

I was actually hoping for more feedback on the content itself. I'm
still not clear if it's supposed to be "developers only - to the
exclusion of users" or "developers only - but accessable to anyone".

It should be readable by everyone, but editable only by authorized users.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

I was actually hoping for more feedback on the content itself. I'm
still not clear if it's supposed to be "developers only - to the
exclusion of users" or "developers only - but accessable to anyone".

It should be readable by everyone, but editable only by authorized users.

I think the lessons of wikipedia is precisely that you *don't* want to add
such barriers. You want to let people add stuff pretty much freely. That
encourages people to get involved and put up information.

Experience shows that most people are cooperative most of the time. If there
turns out to be particularly contentious areas you can restrict access to
those areas to authorized users or ban ip addresses.

I've already put some stuff up there. I didn't plan to, but when I was
browsing I had ideas and the ability to add content was just one click away...

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

Greg,

I think the lessons of wikipedia is precisely that you *don't* want to add
such barriers. You want to let people add stuff pretty much freely. That
encourages people to get involved and put up information.

The other lesson of Wikipedia is that maintaining wiki quality for a generally
editable wiki requires a full-time dedicated staff. We don't even have any
volunteers who have 4 hours/week to commit to cleaning up the wiki, unless
you're volunteering.

This is *particularly* true of the TODO stuff. We simply don't want Joe User
adding their personal wishlist to the TODOs, and that's exactly what will
happen if the TODO list is world-writable. TODOs should be items which have
been hashed out here on the Hackers list, and the wiki page should list the
specification which is the general consensus.

If we had a "user documentation wiki", then *that* should be world-editable,
but again that would require community volunteers to dedicate to cleaning it
up. The developer wiki is by and for actual contributors.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Gregory Stark wrote:

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

I was actually hoping for more feedback on the content itself. I'm
still not clear if it's supposed to be "developers only - to the
exclusion of users" or "developers only - but accessable to anyone".

It should be readable by everyone, but editable only by authorized users.

I think the lessons of wikipedia is precisely that you *don't* want to add
such barriers. You want to let people add stuff pretty much freely. That
encourages people to get involved and put up information.

I don't agree, you should also look at the recent post and fork by one
of wikipedia's co-founders. The developers wiki should only be edited by
authorized users.

Now, getting authorized should be easy as reasonably possible, but
having a wholesale editing orgy on the wiki responsible for tracking
postgresql developer information is not a good idea.

Joshua D. Drake

--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Gregory Stark wrote:

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

I was actually hoping for more feedback on the content itself. I'm
still not clear if it's supposed to be "developers only - to the
exclusion of users" or "developers only - but accessable to anyone".

It should be readable by everyone, but editable only by authorized
users.

I think the lessons of wikipedia is precisely that you *don't* want to
add
such barriers. You want to let people add stuff pretty much freely. That
encourages people to get involved and put up information.

I don't agree, you should also look at the recent post and fork by one
of wikipedia's co-founders. The developers wiki should only be edited by
authorized users.

Now, getting authorized should be easy as reasonably possible, but
having a wholesale editing orgy on the wiki responsible for tracking
postgresql developer information is not a good idea.

I agree.
Banning IPs is simply not feasible.
I think a minor moderation step during the signup is little overhead and
ensures we know who changed what etc. This is obviously not only
important for blaming but also great for talking to people about a given
page when it comes time to update it.

I think however there should be a "section" that is free for all. It
should be clearly labeled with parts are free for all and which are not.
It should be easy to move pages from one section to the other and back.

Essentially I would say the wiki should be open to anyone who signs up,
however there should be pages that are only writeable to people inside a
special group. I am not sure how the ACL works in the current wiki. SOme
wikis allow you to define ACL's by page, some allow you to create
subwikis with different ACLs etc.

regards,
Lukas

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

The other lesson of Wikipedia is that maintaining wiki quality for a generally
editable wiki requires a full-time dedicated staff. We don't even have any
volunteers who have 4 hours/week to commit to cleaning up the wiki, unless
you're volunteering.

Bullshit. Most pages on wikipedia don't require any attention from such staff.
There are *millions* of pages constantly being updated something that only
works because of that dynamic. Only a small number of pages need any special
attention.

The wiki has been sitting there for two weeks and hasn't had any problems.
It's already getting more attention and updates than the techdocs wiki which
still has articles up from 2001 that are no longer relevant and in some cases
are actively misleading.

Putting barriers up blocking people trying to help isn't any guarantee of
quality. What it does guarantee is irrelevance.

This is *particularly* true of the TODO stuff. We simply don't want Joe User
adding their personal wishlist to the TODOs, and that's exactly what will
happen if the TODO list is world-writable. TODOs should be items which have
been hashed out here on the Hackers list, and the wiki page should list the
specification which is the general consensus.

Frankly that's what we have today and that's why it's useless. Things only get
put on the list when everyone who cares already knows what has to be done and
then nobody looks at it because there's nothing there they don't already know
about.

A TODO list people can freely add stuff to is precisely what would make it
useful. It would have things we don't already know.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

Gregory Stark wrote:

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:

The other lesson of Wikipedia is that maintaining wiki quality for a generally
editable wiki requires a full-time dedicated staff. We don't even have any
volunteers who have 4 hours/week to commit to cleaning up the wiki, unless
you're volunteering.

Bullshit. Most pages on wikipedia don't require any attention from such staff.

This does not help your argument.

The wiki has been sitting there for two weeks and hasn't had any problems.
It's already getting more attention and updates than the techdocs wiki which
still has articles up from 2001 that are no longer relevant and in some cases
are actively misleading.

Techdocs is a different problem all together. Josh has already mentioned
some problems with it. I can mention more.

1. It isn't easy to login
2. It is even harder to create a login
3. There is no creation of login for most people because they don't know
they have to go to the community portion of the www site to get to it.

I am sure their are other problems on the inside, I haven't actually
ever logged in ;)

Putting barriers up blocking people trying to help isn't any guarantee of
quality. What it does guarantee is irrelevance.

Again you argue without actual evidence. Wikipedia is a success it is
however it does have quite a bit of problems as well. A simple but very
straightforward signup mechanism isn't going to stop most people.

Frankly that's what we have today and that's why it's useless. Things only get
put on the list when everyone who cares already knows what has to be done and
then nobody looks at it because there's nothing there they don't already know
about.

Anytime I have asked for something to be put on the TODO list, it is. As
long as I can provide a practical reason as to what it is and why it
would be good.

That part of the TODO works just fine.

Now, do I think there is improvement to be made? Of course but the
current TODO is far from useless.

A TODO list people can freely add stuff to is precisely what would make it
useful. It would have things we don't already know.

I am just going to hope that you are kidding about this one.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
http://www.commandprompt.com/

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Gregory Stark wrote:

A TODO list people can freely add stuff to is precisely what would make it
useful. It would have things we don't already know.

I am just going to hope that you are kidding about this one.

Fortunately, none of the real developers would have to pay any attention
to any such page ... and you can bet they wouldn't.

regards, tom lane

On Sat, Sep 16, 2006 at 09:15:24PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Gregory Stark wrote:

A TODO list people can freely add stuff to is precisely what would make it
useful. It would have things we don't already know.

I am just going to hope that you are kidding about this one.

Fortunately, none of the real developers would have to pay any attention
to any such page ... and you can bet they wouldn't.

Well, there is a reason why I put a big label there "Unofficial TODO
List". I tried to make it clear that it's not an official stance of the
project.

If someone wants to spend an afternoon putting up a coherent
description of their wishlist item complete with possible problems and
solutions, then I don't see why we should stop them. The page someone
has put up covering XML told me more about the current state of XML
support in postgres than a few hours of archive searching would.

It's just not official, that doesn't make it any less useful.

Two points I'm not clear about on this thread though:

1. Authorized user: is that someone with an account, or someone who has
been authorized by someone else?

2. I can see the official todo list being in CVS, which gives it all
the access protection it needs. A wiki todo list can stay where it is,
just that it's not official.

[I've just made a reference to the TODO list in CVS from the wiki, that
should help].

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

The wiki has been sitting there for two weeks and hasn't had
any problems.

Uh, you mean apart from the fact that it took very little time (days,
IIRC) before we had people writing attempts at user documentation,
somthing that we already have *two* different systems (interactive docs
+ new techdocs) for, and specifically said we absolutely did not want on
this wiki? IIRC, that got on there long before *any* content related to
what was actually supposed to be there..

It's already getting more attention and updates than the
techdocs wiki which still has articles up from 2001 that are
no longer relevant and in some cases are actively misleading.

It's in the process of being cleaned up, mainly by Robert Treat. I'm
sure he'd appreciate help.

Why would *this* wiki be less suceptible to the same kind of issues than
the old one? That's more an argument that we *will* have this problem on
the wiki.

//Magnus

Techdocs is a different problem all together. Josh has
already mentioned some problems with it. I can mention more.

[warning: thread hi-jack]

1. It isn't easy to login

Really? You're kidding, right? You click a link that requires login, and
you get a browser login box. How much easier can it be?

2. It is even harder to create a login

Again, really? If yo uget the login prompt and hit cancel (or just login
with an invalid password), that says "you need a community login. If you
don't hav eone, click here to read about it." If you "click here", you
get to the page where you sign up.

Now, explaining this process on the frontpage of the techdocs part of
the site might not be a bad idea at all (in fact, it's a good idea :-P),
but do you honestly think the process is complex? If so, what should we
do to make it easier?

3. There is no creation of login for most people because they
don't know they have to go to the community portion of the
www site to get to it.

See above, you don't need to do this.

I am sure their are other problems on the inside, I haven't
actually ever logged in ;)

You should, we'd like to know about them so we can fix them.

//Magnus

Two points I'm not clear about on this thread though:

1. Authorized user: is that someone with an account, or
someone who has been authorized by someone else?

IIRC, the idea was "someone with an account". Basically you add a (very
very small) hurdle so you only get the people who actually *care* to
write things. But if you do care, it's not a lot of work. You also get
traceability, so you can talk to whomever wrote a certain thing.

I don't see any gain in having someone specifically authorize who can
write to it.

//Magnus

On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 03:09:29PM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:

The wiki has been sitting there for two weeks and hasn't had
any problems.

Uh, you mean apart from the fact that it took very little time (days,
IIRC) before we had people writing attempts at user documentation,

<snip>

Really? Where was that? Did it get deleted in the meantime? Who's
responsible for that kind of thing?

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/

The wiki has been sitting there for two weeks and hasn't had any
problems.

Uh, you mean apart from the fact that it took very little

time (days,

IIRC) before we had people writing attempts at user documentation,

<snip>

Really? Where was that? Did it get deleted in the meantime?
Who's responsible for that kind of thing?

Yes.
Dave took it off when he moved the wiki to it's correct place (being
developer.postgresql.org)

AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to actually take *responsibility* for
maintaining the wiki - both software and content-wise. But I may have
missed something while I speed-read some lists after getting back.

//Magnus