Yes, I agree with Michael’s observations in the blog post. However, one thing that’s easier about a wiki is that the editing process is much more lightweight than making a PR.
But GitHub has a wonderful feature (that I have rarely used) that mitigates this problem. Viewing a file in GitHub offers a little pencil icon in the top-right. It allows you to make arbitrary changes in the file and then automates the construction of a PR. The owner of the file can then accept the PR very, very easily. If the editor has commit rights, you can make your edits into a commit right away. No need to fork, pull and push. Is this perhaps an easy improvement we can enact? Note that we’re already moving in this direction with ghc-proposals, which subsumes a large part of what the GHC dev wiki has been used for. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard A. Eisenberg Asst. Prof. of Computer Science Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, PA, USA cs.brynmawr.edu/~rae > On Sep 27, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Eric Seidel <e...@seidel.io> wrote: > > Thanks for the link Alan. > > I can personally attest to being intimidated by GHC's wiki when I > started contributing. I think having a review mechanism in place would > have helped, because then you at least know that one or two other people > think your content is clear. > > On a more minor note, I know the trac wiki has a history feature, but > for some reason I find it much less useful than a git history. Perhaps > this is just an issue of familiarity. > > On Tue, Sep 27, 2016, at 07:54, Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote: >> I think this is relevant to the dicussion: >> http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2015/08/thoughts-on-documentation >> >> Alan >> >> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs < >> ghc-devs@haskell.org> wrote: >> >>> We currently have *3* wikis: >>> >>> >>> >>> https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0> >>> >>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc >>> >>> https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/ >>> >>> >>> >>> I didn’t even know about the third of these, but the first two have >>> clearly differentiated goals: >>> >>> · https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0> >>> is about user-facing, and often user-generated, documentation. Guidance >>> about improving performance, programming idioms, tutorials etc. >>> >>> · https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc is about GHC’s implementation, >>> oriented to people who want to understand how GHC works, and how to modify >>> it. >>> >>> >>> >>> I think this separation is actually quite helpful. >>> >>> >>> >>> I agree with what you and others say about the difficulty of keeping wikis >>> organised. But that’s not primarily a technology issue: there is a >>> genuinely difficult challenge here. How do you build and maintain >>> up-to-date, navigable, well-organised information about a large, complex, >>> and rapidly changing artefact like GHC? A wiki is one approach that has >>> the merit that anyone can improve it; control is not centralised. But I’d >>> love there to be other, better solutions. >>> >>> >>> >>> Simon >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-boun...@haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Sven >>> Panne >>> *Sent:* 27 September 2016 08:46 >>> *To:* ghc-devs <ghc-devs@haskell.org> >>> *Subject:* Re: How, precisely, can we improve? >>> >>> >>> >>> Just a remark from my side: The documentation/tooling landscape is a bit >>> more fragmented than it needs to be IMHO. More concretely: >>> >>> >>> >>> * We currently have *3* wikis: >>> >>> >>> >>> https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0> >>> >>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc >>> >>> https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> It's clear to me that they have different emphases and different >>> origins, but in the end this results in valuable information being >>> scattered around. Wikis in general are already quite hard to navigate (due >>> to their inherent chaotic "structure"), so having 3 of them makes things >>> even worse. It would be great to have *the* single Haskell Wiki directly on >>> haskell.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0> >>> in an easily reachable place. >>> >>> >>> >>> * To be an active Haskell community member, you need quite a few >>> different logins: Some for the Wikis mentioned above, one for Hackage, >>> another one for Phabricator, perhaps an SSH key here and there... >>> Phabricator is a notable exception: It accepts your GitHub/Google+/... >>> logins. It would be great if the other parts of the Haskell ecosystem >>> accepted those kinds of logins, too. >>> >>> >>> >>> * https://haskell-lang.org/ >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org%2F&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=9ndNQVeDQy7lPb4qmn13k%2BAtztK8F9Hq%2B2jeXKm9YFU%3D&reserved=0> >>> has great stuff on it, but its relationship to haskell.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0> >>> is unclear to me. Their "documentation" sub-pages look extremely similar, >>> but haskell-lang.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=G9e%2BVDuPTtZHZl%2BGd2fFShUznQjDa158JENjoMiD0VY%3D&reserved=0> >>> has various (great!) tutorials and a nice overview of common libraries on >>> it. From an external POV it seems to me that haskell-lang.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=G9e%2BVDuPTtZHZl%2BGd2fFShUznQjDa158JENjoMiD0VY%3D&reserved=0> >>> should be seamlessly integrated into haskell.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0>, >>> i.e. merged into it. Having an endless sea of links on haskell.org >>> <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0> >>> is not the same as having content nicely integrated into it, sorted by >>> topic, etc. >>> >>> >>> >>> All those points are not show-stoppers for people trying to be more active >>> in the Haskell community, but nevertheless they make things harder than >>> they need to be, so I fear we lose people quite early. To draw an analogy: >>> As probably everybody who actively monitors their web shop/customer site >>> knows, even seemlingy small things moves customers totally away from your >>> site. One unclear payment form? The vast majority of your potential >>> customers aborts the purchase immediately and forever. One confusing >>> interstitial web page? Say goodbye to lots of people. One hard-to-find >>> button/link? A forced login/new account? => Commercial disaster, etc. etc. >>> >>> >>> >>> Furthermore, I'm quite aware of the technical/social difficulties of my >>> proposals, but that shouldn't let us stop trying to improve... >>> >>> >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> S. >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ghc-devs mailing list >>> ghc-devs@haskell.org >>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> ghc-devs mailing list >> ghc-devs@haskell.org >> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs > _______________________________________________ > ghc-devs mailing list > ghc-devs@haskell.org > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs