On 2010-12-16 23:44, Chris Morgan wrote:
... The current wiki is difficult to navigate (visually), and how to edit is not too obvious (instructions hidden behind WikiSyntax I believe). Getting back to the main website is confusing. I would gladly help tidy up wiki documentation but don't feel in a position to do so (I use Inkscape daily but am just a user - I don't know much about the technicalities of the project nor about writing/editing user documentation).
Indeed, the current system is cumbersome and unfriendly. I haven't updated information on the wiki a number of times because it was just too hard... if it had been in a repository, I would have; I think I did finally create an account and have edited one or two pages but I really can't remember well... my experience with the current wiki is almost entirely negative, really.
It is tragic that some people have apparently found it too hard to edit the wiki. I do not consider this to be inherent in a wiki though. I do perceive this as an indication that the wiki should be made more accessible/integrated better and clearer help should be given (as would be necessary with /any/ system like we're discussing).
Generally, what I'm hearing is that the wiki is a bit of a mess, that our main site could use fresh approach and that the connection between the two is currently very bad. I think these are fair comments.
So why not simply move most of our site over to the wiki? Then we can reorganize and restyle that, making sure that it becomes easier to navigate and contribute. That way our site becomes more accessible and better orgaized, while still getting the advantage of being able to easily edit it.
Keep in mind that Inkscape relies on voluntary contributions. This means that whatever system we have, it should ideally be an "out-of-the-box" solution, have a very low barrier to entry and require as little maintenance as possible, while still allowing for structure and complex content. (To me this spells wiki, especially since we already have one ready to go.)
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As for using text editors and repositories, these are definitely NOT orthogonal to using a wiki. MediaWiki even has some built-in support for this kind of thing (and third party tools exist for much more), see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_editor_support (Although the title talks about text editors, it also covers a number of tools that can be used to have wiki pages in your local file system.)