Hi Frank,

On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 08:47:06 +0100, Frank Schönheit wrote:

> Hmm. Is a wiki really better for discussing things which are still
> evolving?

For discussion it depends. Lengthy discussions may be better handled by
mail, at least if participants know how to quote ... shorter discussion
is also ok in a wiki if it stays ontopic. On the other hand, you can
also group the discussion nicely by topic or whatever you like, and gain
more overview than by mail. See Wikipedia, there is a discussion page
for each individual topic, same in the go-ooo wiki, just that there
isn't much content in discussions yet.

For the sample code it would be better to live in a wiki. Having several
levels of quotes in mail interspersed with new code fragments and
arbitrary line breaks inserted by incapable mail tools doesn't really
add to clearness. The advantage of a wiki is that you immediately see
the current final version, but still have the diffs available, much the
same as with any versioning system. You simply can't do that with mail.

Futhermore, a wiki is searchable. The Collab mailing list archives are
just a pain in this regard, and if at all don't produce results that
would really fit the query, mildly spoken. Going to mail-archive.com
helps, and even better if you happen to keep your own mail archive and
use a capable mailer that can do a full body text search. Still, for
collaborative editing I think a wiki is predestinated.

> My (who I am seldomly working with Wikis, admittedly)
> impression with Wikis is that they are not really good in exchanging
> opinions about a problem, on the track to a final mutual solution.

Mailing lists have the advantage to track opinions over time, by the
natural sequence of mail flow and immediately visible in quote
hierarchies. Wikis have the advantage of being able to group topics and
rearrange things over time. Combining both cultures seems appropriate,
such as putting the snippets into the wiki and discussing them on the
list, giving a pointer. Summarizing the discussion in the wiki again
could be another option, though I don't think that would happen
frequently, developers don't do such things ;-)

  Eike

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 OOo/SO Calc core developer. Number formatter bedevilled i18n transpositionizer.
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