[WikiEN-l] Re: help me

Thu May 20 04:57:18 UTC 2004

Eric B. Rakim wrote:

>  >From that it became obvious to me that he hadn't even read
>the article because it should be pretty damn obvious to
>anyone that an article titled "XFree86 logfile" is about the
>XFree86 logfile. And that I told him that, whereafter he
>listed all other six articles I had written:

I took a look at the [[XFree86 logfile]] article, and my impression 
is that although it contains information that would be useful to 
someone who is trying to debug XFree86, it doesn't really belong in 
the Wikipedia. Someone else here suggested putting it into a computer 
manual in WikiBooks, and I think that's a good suggestion.

The difference between [[XFree86]] and [[XFree86 logfile]] is that 
[[XFree86]] really *is* an "encyclopedia" article. It begins with a 
lead paragraph that explains, even to a relative novice, what XFree86 
is: "an open source implementation of the X Window System.." By 
contrast, [[XFree86 logfile]] begins as follows:

>When XFree86 starts, it creates a logfile which contains information 
>about what happened when XFree86 started. It contains information 
>about what modules were loaded, which color depth that is used etc. 
>The file is especially useful when something goes awry, as reading 
>it can help you find exactly what went wrong.

This reads like a technical manual, not an encyclopedia. As a lead 
paragraph, it leaves something to be desired. It mentions several 
concepts that are not explained and are not easily understood by a 
naive reader, who would likely be left wondering, "What's a module?" 
or "How do I 'read' the file?" Such a reader would be left even more 
confused upon reading the next sentence in the article:

>The file almost always resides in "/var/log/XFree86.0.log", 
>ofcourse, where it is placed is configurable.

The questions that I imagine arising include, "Where is 
'/var/log/XFree86.0.log'?" "What does it mean to 'reside' there?" 
"How is it 'configurable'?" Someone who is not already fairly 
knowledgeable about Unix will be thoroughly confused by this language.

Of course, even the [[XFree86]] article would be esoteric and 
uninteresting to someone who does not use Unix. However, its lead 
paragraph does at least provide enough contextual information that 
even someone who is ignorant about Unix could quickly understand the 
gist of the article.

Some of this could be addressed by putting more context into the 
article, e.g., the lead paragraph could begin, "The XFree86 logfile 
is a computer file that logs information about operations of the 
[[XFree86]] interface that runs under many Unix-like operating 
systems."

The real problem, though, is that the topic itself is inherently so 
technical in nature that no amount of rewriting will make it 
accessible to a general reader. An "encyclopedia" should be a 
collection of articles that are accessible even to readers who are 
not specialists. Articles of this type often can be written even 
about obscure topics. For example, the article on [[Chandigarh]], a 
city in India, is easy to understand even for someone who knows 
nothing else about India. I don't think this is really possible with 
an article about [[XFree86 logfile]], which by its very nature 
requires a fairly high level of computer literacy on the part of the 
reader.

I don't think the article should be deleted, but I think it should be 
relocated out of the Wikipedia and into a more specialized 
information resource, such as WikiBooks.

--Sheldon Rampton