[Foundation-l] Wikidoc

Sun Dec 5 19:41:00 UTC 2004

Jonathan-
> Now, the last week, some of our contributors have told us that they feel
> like duplicating the Wikipedia project, something that I cannot fully
> agree to. Wikipedia is encyclopedic and documentation isn't, meaning
> that it not really fits there. I know about Wikibooks, but the whole
> concept of a "single place for GNU/Linux and Free Software
> documentation" would be a little far off.

I'm not sure I can follow you here. I initiated openfacts.berlios.de for  
this purpose a while ago, but it never really took off, and I did not put  
much further effort into it. Today I think that this kind of work should  
take place on Wikibooks. You can create a portal page specifically for  
open source documentation, and we'd be glad to set up some convenient  
redirect there like opensource.wikibooks.org.

Of course there are drawbacks: Recent changes will include changes to all  
books; linking specifically within the context of the open source section  
will require specifying some kind of namespace or pseudo-namespace, etc.  
But I believe that the right answer to these problems is to gradually  
improve the software to better deal with these issues, e.g. by filtering  
recent changes by namespace, and making certain namespaces "closed", so  
that any link you create within them points to pages in the same  
namespace.

In other words, I'd rather you outline the needs you think must be met  
before Wikibooks can become a useful open source portal, than starting a  
separate project.

Regards,

Erik