Wiki or no Wiki

[SilverBear]

(2012-01-26 11:50 GMT)kib Wrote:  

(2012-01-24 16:32 GMT)SilverBear Wrote:  I'm copying your post now, so we'll have a good English version of the correct method to put in the Wiki once that is back online.

I am probably not bringing the wiki back online in writable mode, insteads opting to move all information to the forum.
The old wiki sadly nevert gained much attention and I don't want to split the little information we currently have over two areas.

You could make a howto post here.;
Just make a post and choose "howto" in the thread prefixes to get a nice [Howto] in front of your thread title. I am looking at nice ways to use these thread prefixes, for instance linking to all [Howto] posts, or linking to all posts tagged [A60]

OK, you can do it however you want to do it.

I'll continue to try to help out however you want. But it seems backwards to me, from the viewpoint of a person looking for information.

Others may have a different way of looking at it. But when I look for information on, say, a Linux OS that I'm trying out for the first time, I first look to the manual [if they have one] and then to the wiki if the manual doesn't cover the issue with which I'm having a problem. Last of all, I do a search of the distro forum, and if that fails -- I go to the effort to register and ask my question on the forum.

The way I see it, the Wiki isn't "another area" --it's the organized version of what knowledge is gained by the community.

The problem you noted --"old wiki sadly never gained much attention" -- is very common problem, if you mean that not many people wrote for it.

A lot of people are shy even about posting in a forum. But, even so, many people will do that. BUT most everybody is TOTALLY afraid to write in a wiki! I had that problem when the Mepis Linux community administration elected me to lead the project to revise their Wiki so that it would be updated and accurate for the different distro versions. Mepis is based on Debian, and the differences between "lenny" and "squeeze" make it important to users to know which Wiki pages are good for which OS version. So I didn't have to write everything myself, I'd email forum members and say something like, "That was a great post you made on how you fixed the wireless connection on your old xxxxx-chip! Can you write it up in detail for us in the Wiki, please."

People were just scared. It was like I was asking them to write the definitive biography of Jesus Christ or something! Most people [after I begged politely and flattered them] would write what i asked for --but they wanted to email it to me, and let ME be the one on record as putting it in the Wiki!

The point is: like any project that really goes anyplace, you need to have one person in charge of it, to make sure things get done. Democracy and all that is a wonderful concept, but an individual needs to be "Minister of the Wiki" if the Wiki is going to function. Even if nobody else writes in the wiki, at least s/he can copy info that is scattered in the forum posts and put it into an easy-to-access form.