On 2010-12-15 04:55, Ian Caldwell wrote:
personally I have a beef with the wiki, I see no real reason to keep the wiki.... In my opinion it serves no purpose if our docs are good enough, and kept in SVN they can be updated easy enough by the people that need to.... It's crazy. Thanks, Ian Caldwell ...
We indeed have documentation that does not need to be on a wiki (and a lot of it isn't on the wiki), and you're completely right that for a lot of documentation the wiki simply isn't the right place.
However, that's not all that's on the Wiki. It also provides a place for people to write proposals, discuss (in a more structured manner than on the mailing list) and keep track of things. And it has a relatively low barrier for entry, which is quite crucial in my opinion.
I'm not saying that it would be impossible to live without the Wiki, but it's not just an accumulation of documents and definitely does serve a purpose. It could be improved, and I agree that some things may not belong there, but eradicating it altogether should not be done lightly.
Also, if we were to move a lot of things away from the Wiki then we really should think about making it easier to update the website. I wouldn't have a clue how it's done.
BTW, if you have documents that can be viewed on-line, in some easily editable syntax and community editable through BZR, what's the difference with a Wiki? (Except that you can't easily link between documents in BZR, would need to agree on a file format and that you would force anyone wanting to edit a document to install BZR and some editor.)