Does the Github wiki is really shit?

Please @zamboni, could you explain what do you mean with BRRR ? :confused:
Iā€™m going to point out that it could be offensive to who are trying to debate here, please always provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation

I donā€™t like discourse
I think a REAL wiki is really needed
I think that copy and paste from here to there is a bad thing
I think that using external services is not a good idea (BTW, what if tomorrow the hoster of this discourse instance will close? it already happened)
HTH

And I add: someone here, a VERY experienced and propositive user, already told all of it since the beginningā€¦ and I see heā€™s getting more frustrated (as I am)

You donā€™t like many things man, every time, and imho that approach isnā€™t constructive.
Thatā€™s the discussion, baby. Donā€™t you like it?
Be the change you want to see in the world :kissing_smiling_eyes:

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wellā€¦ AFAICT, since the beginning of this ā€œcommunityā€ site many users ask for a REAL wiki andfor documentationā€¦

since the community wants such a feature (and all of us can see the daily requests for documentation improvement), why thereā€™s no wiki?

maybe my approach is not constructive, but it seems that what community wants is not what community hasā€¦

My 2cents: letā€™s use redmine wiki.

Edit: we already have it in place and itā€™s working (and we used it).

ā€¦until we moved the documentation to ReadTheDocs! Since that time I donā€™t see any big contribution to the wiki on Redmine, whilst ReadTheDocs was expanded a lot with Pull Requests from GitHub. yes, I think it can be enhanced further, however as @alefattorini said and I agree with him, this is the right way to collaborate with the documentation easing the contribution from everyone.

I second this.
We already have everything, we have user accounts in place, we will have only one place for everything, we can begin to write docs NOW.
When we will find the perfect wiki, we will move contents there.

Iā€™d also like to modify the landing page of www.nethserver.org according to Jimā€™s suggestions.

I just wrote my first page, see Contribution sections here:

There are still a lot of (old) pages:
http://dev.nethserver.org/projects/nethserver/wiki/index

I think ReadTheDocs and the wiki has two different targets.
The first one is for the official manual, the second one is for contributions.

Because we used it only for temporary developer documentation.

What kind of contributions? Are you meaning NethForge RPMs?

:smile: ā€¦that is a very rare beast! Never seen so far

Just for the record, currently Discourse worked fine for our HowTos, thatā€™s a fact. We have a bunch of howtos here, donā€™t you think?
Most people are using it, check also:

@stephdl from your point of view, what Discourse lacks to became a useful wiki? Please, my memory is short :worried:
Automatic table of contents? What else?
Automatic wiki-mode setting of new pages/topics?.
Easy page linking?

Discourse is cool and useful, but itā€™s definitively not a good platform for howtos and doc :smile:

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Maybe youā€™re right but 55 different howtos from many people are a fact, isnā€™t it?
The fact is that It has definitely shown to be easy to use, handy and straightforward.
Also, people can comment below trying to continuously improve the doc.
Itā€™s fragmented maybe, it hasnā€™t a good structure yep, it hasnā€™t basic (like TOC) and advanced features maybe, but the fact still remains :smile:

Hmmā€¦ if there is no other option than to put it in Discourse, it is not strange those howtoā€™s end up thereā€¦ :wink:
I do see the split between wanting to have everything centralized and needing options that are not available (yet) in Discourse.
The other option is to stick with mediawiki and maybe enhance that with some (eye)candy like http://bluespice.com/

@zamboni is right, a wiki is a book that you can follow/discover chapters from the table of content, discourse displays the last content and you find them by key word if you know them? ([of course at first you have no idea what to search][1]).

more over discourse cuts the page content, redmine no, github yesā€¦I love to read a howto on my three 27ā€™'.

yes yes yes

I need to have a go on the page linking by category in redmine I hope it is feasible, it must be a basic feature

From my point of view discourse should be a support forum, and all howto, bug report should be done elsewhere. (recall do one thing but do it well).

Iā€™m a wiki player, [this is who Iā€™m][2], Trying to explain why a wiki is better than discourse for howto is like walking for a homo habilis

For all howto there in discourse for me it is not a problem, now the most important and hard thing to do is in front of the community

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[troll mode on]
Using Discourse for documentation is like: http://itechthereforeiam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/right-tool-for-the-job.png
[troll mode off]

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and this is clear since the beginningā€¦

sometimes people should really listen to the suggestions coming from experienced usersā€¦

I repeat myself: the web2.0 approach is wrong in a professional environmentā€¦ you can buy an ebook, but sysadmins and developers still buy books made of paper.

now itā€™s up to who decide to choose between the bell & whistles approach and the professional one
last post of mine here

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I like to print the doc

even if the formatting features are good it seems to lack category feature, funny it is asked since a relly long time

and probably more

did I miss something ???

iā€™m sorry, but i must admit iā€™m a little lostā€¦ so just to do a recap, if i understood correctly possible solutions are:

  1. wiki on github (too limited ?)
  2. a new hosted wiki (ie dokuwiki/mediawikiā€¦)
  3. a viewer for discourse howto posts like: https://meta.discourse.org/t/unofficial-community-docs-learndiscourse-org/31931?u=erlend_sh
  4. a viewer for github wiki (as stand alone or plugin of dokuwiki)
  5. wiki on redmine

if this is correct i agree with @filippo_carletti, unless there are a real short -term plan from devs to move issues from redmine to githubā€¦ in that case leaving redmine active only for wiki maybe itā€™s not a great solutionā€¦ i donā€™t wanna open a new thread about ā€œissue on githubā€ but i think this is a thing to know/evaluate to take a good decisionā€¦

and what will be the workflow? i meanā€¦ redmine will host all wiki? or redmine+discourse? or (i hope not) some on discourse and some on redmine?

@alefattorini itā€™s hard to implement a kb like this in discourse? not a wiki but could be a middle way solutionā€¦
https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-to-host-a-knowledge-base/34036/7
http://community.quickfile.co.uk/c/knowledgebase

after all itā€™s hard to admit, but iā€™m ā€œold insideā€ (well also outside :slight_smile: ) moinmoin/dokuwiki/mediawiki are still more familiar to meā€¦

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