Francois Colonna wrote:
> Miles O'Neal wrote:
>> Francois Colonna said...
>>
>> |It will be nice to store this information on the Wiki, to allow peopl=
>> |e=20
>> |to find it easily
>> |Here it is lost.
>>
>> There are searchable archives, IIRC.
>>
>>
>>   
> It is very different.
> An archive is difficult to search, is messy and is not uptodate.
> A wiki page is improving along  the time. it is uptodate and stays in 
> place.
> 
> I do not understand why it is not used for all these installation problems.
> 
> François Colonna

A very good question that comes up every six months or so.
Here's the explanation.

Why no wiki's?

First Problem: Nobody has volunteered to create and maintain one. 
Please note the word "maintain".  Anybody can put up a wiki.  You see 
them all the time and they fall into four catagories.  A) Hacked, B) 
not-maintained, C) So open that they are are useless, D) well maintained 
and useful.

Second Problem: I don't like wiki's.  I know html, it is a standard. 
Everytime I look at a wiki it just feels like someone just has some type 
of shorthand, and then behind the scenes it's converted to html.  So why 
not just write it in html in the first place.
This is a person preference.  But because of this preference, I am not 
volunteering to do a wiki.
The other main developers have not volunteered either, and quite 
frankly, I don't think it should be them volunteering to do it.

Third Problem:  The site www.scientificlinux.org is maintained by 
Fermilab.  It is using it's resources, it's network bandwidth, it's 
everything.  Fermilab does not like things being put on it's websites 
that might embarrass the lab.  Of the past several times where a web 
site has embarrassed the lab, it has been wiki's.  Someone left some 
part of it open, so that people could easily write to it.  Usually it 
has been very subtle, just a link to a pornographic site, or some very 
racist remark, or both.
So the wiki HAS to be moderated and maintained.

So you see, all three reason's we don't have a wiki, and we don't have a 
good 'hardware problems' area, all really stem from that very first 
problem.  Nobody has volunteered.

Troy
-- 
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
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