write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

Mith · 2004-10-14 20:39:56

subject says it all.
I thought about writing a text to like fstab and [just forgot what else I wanted to write]. So what is the best way, just refer to like the forum or another wiki or just write a page into the wiki?

phrakture · 2004-10-14 20:59:25

personally, I feel making a wiki page linking to other pages is defeating the purpose - everyone here knows how to search.

I would write your own doc and add a "references" section at the bottom with links to where you got info from...

at the top of mine, I refered to 2 docs:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOr … figuration

Mith · 2004-10-14 21:02:48

I just don't want to write a page, and then someone comes along and notes that the same thing has been written here or there before..
you know what I mean?

phrakture · 2004-10-14 21:16:26

well, I would say this - the wiki is part of the arch linux documentation...
if something has been written before, it's probably specific to other distros and in other locations. I know if I was a newbie, installing archlinux and had a question, I would check the arch linux documentation / forums first. And searching the forums isn't always the best idea - you may have to read pages upon pages before you find out the fix.

The font documentation I have written you can find anywhere. However, if you look for font docs on the web or through TLDP, you come up with old ones. In addition, the current docs on font usage is long and doesn't contain alot of configuration information. I consider the wiki as a place to summarize a whole mess of information for easy reference and usage...

Dusty · 2004-10-14 21:21:53

rasat and I prefer that the wiki have as much information is it as possible. Contrary to phrakture's statement, not all people do know how to search. :-D

You're free to place anything (relevant) in the wiki. However, keep in mind that it will have to be maintained, so if there is a document that already describes how to do it somewhere (for example, tldp.org), there is not much sense to duplicate the information. In this case, it would be better to link to the external document from the wiki index.

Such external documents are usually distro-generic. With Arch, this is often enough, but it always helps if users have step-by-step documents that describe exactly how to do it on Arch (eg: edit /exact/file instead of 'edit the config file on your distro, its usually /possible/file'). In this case, a wiki-ized step-by-step summary is definately useful.

Now, for your exact question. We would like *all* documentation and information to be available in the wiki, either as a wiki document or a link to an external site. We occasionally link to forum topics, but in these cases it would be better if somebody (usually it ends up being me, *sigh*) would write a wiki document to summarize the (usually confusing) linked thread. So if your choices are a) post a summary to the forum or b) post a doc to the wiki, please pick b. You can always make a post in this forum outlining your document if you want people to critique it or fix it up.

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2004-10-14 20:39:56

write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

#2 2004-10-14 20:59:25

Re: write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

#3 2004-10-14 21:02:48

Re: write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

#4 2004-10-14 21:16:26

Re: write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

#5 2004-10-14 21:21:53

Re: write new wiki documents or refer to forum?

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