Hi Everyone/Adrian, I'm looking at pages like https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ and https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/pmac. I believe the pages are under control of the Debian webmasters. I think the pages should be moved to a wiki so the community can maintain them.
The biggest reason for a wiki-based page is community updates. New information can be added to pages as it becomes available. The community can add the content so maintainers don't have to spend time writing docs. Wiki's also have a confounding property (to me) that they converge on the right answer over time even though experts are _not_ curating the content. There's supposed to be an IEEE or journal paper that explains the phenomenon, but I've never read it. (I don't know the title and I have not been able to locate it). Wikis provide exceptional dissemination of long term, less-frequently-changing information due in part to search engine indexing. Search engines provide indexing of wikis, and the indexing is superior to other mediums, like mailing lists. Search engines usually return wiki content as a top search result. The quality search results reduces mailing list messages and reduces work for maintainers since they don't have to answer [the same] questions time and time again. On the other hand, mailing lists are great for break/fix, like immediate problems on installing Debian 10 on a PowerMac. As soon as a problem is encountered it can be addressed interactively. Once the break/fix has been resolved, new information can be added to the wiki for long term dissemination. The biggest detraction for webmaster-controlled content is outdated content. It's fairly obvious the Debian webmasters are not following threads on the PowerPC list, and they are not updating content. Because of the outdated content, users will constantly encounter problems and constantly generate ailing list messages. A lot of people don't like wikis, like the Apache folks. Unfortunately, the Apache folks who forgo wiki's don't know how to manage information in the modern era. Wikis are great for dissemination of long term information, like how to install Debian on PowerPC or how to install Debian on a PowerMac. Folks like Apache are harming their own projects because they lack expertise in managing information and personal dislikes. Don't be like Apache. Jeff
