RE: Hosting of the cookbook

On 2004-04-23 19:24:27 +0100 Anton van Straaten 
<[email protected]> wrote:

>> The WebIt sources were ignored and forgotten about,
>> but are basically easy to read and comprehend.
> IMO, the wiki format is less cluttered and easier to deal with for the
> purposes of actually writing and editing the content of recipes.  For
> example, we no longer have to wrap each paragraph in a (paragraph 
> [...])
> expression.

You aren't contradicting me, so I assume you agree?

> You previously wrote "I have been put off [updating the Cookbook] 
> because
> of the need to learn things I don't know and something I won't use
> commercially (WebIt)".  Perhaps you feel the same way about Twiki, but
> then the same would be true of any system we choose, other than a wiki
> you're already familiar with.  Afaict, none of those seemed to have 
> the
> kinds of features we wanted.

Yes, Twiki shares the previously mentioned problems, but maybe they're 
unavoidable for this task. Twiki is actually worse on this aspect, 
though: it's not even comprehensible without a sort of dictionary to 
hand. I would never have guessed trying --++-- for a heading, for 
example.

>> Little seems to be done to prevent the problem of
>> forgetting about them from happening again,
> I don't understand this concern.  Making the content available in a
> wiki-like format is specifically intended to make it more accessible, 
> get
> more people interested, and make it much less likely that it be 
> forgotten
> about.  The activity so far is initial evidence of success here.

There is no evidence for this yet: it's simply too early. However, we 
still have no activity measures and rely on the people working on it 
to tell us when they no longer have time again, which still seems a 
bit unsafe. I suggest measuring and reporting activity to 
schematics-development at some reasonable interval, preferably 
automatically, so we can act if it says "Schematician edits: 0%" or 
whatever we think is a questionable level.

-- 
MJR/slef     My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ [email protected]
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