Pascal Van Hecke wrote:

> Please let me reiterate some thoughts:
> 
> - I did not want to CRITICISE the people working on
> the project, because no one ever has the right to
> criticise VOLUNTEERS who are DONATING time and effort
> - however volunteers need FEEDBACK
> - I did want to give some feedback on the experience a
> midgard newbie goes through, being frustrated with the
> way information is available now: in order to be able
> to install the thing, you practically have to have
> read through hundreds of mails for months to collect
> the pieces of information that make up the difference
> with the previous version

Understood. But feedback can be given in various ways. Using "I am
frustrated" as an intro is not likely to come across as positive
feedback.

> the faq is a very good thing, thanks for all that! 
> But I still think that it will remain difficult to
> keep up with the information flow in the mailing list.
>  The problem with the mailing list is that is far too
> unstructured to extract information from it
> afterwards, afterwards meaning: if you do not follow
> it daily.  (And if you DO follow it daily, you simply
> do not have time left to AND work on the documentation
> AND proceed with midgard development...). 

Agreed.

> Furthermore, it turns out that very few people keep
> being motivated for this editorial work, eternally
> having to catch up with the far more exciting
> development...  So I' m afraid that we 'll have to
> find other means to avoid users asking the same
> questions over and over again and developers having to
> spend too much time on support.

That used to be the case... but right now we're not adding new
functionality, so in that area we're in a stable period. We're fixing
things and thinking about architecture.

> The advantage for us is that answering a question and
> making that answer available for reference afterwards
> is ONE effort, there is no need for a poor soul doing
> copy-and paste work in a faq, that is, if the Wiki is
> used with discipline.

[good explanation of wikis and how to use them]

That does sound useful, but I would personally hardly use them. I rely
on mail, and I don't see myself perusing a wiki to see what needs
answering. Am I missing something fundamental about wikis, or
is there something coupling the list and the wiki?

> A problem with the current version of phpWiki is that
> it does not support simple authentication yet (not in
> order to be able to restrict people, but to make
> changes better traceable).  There are also some
> administration issues, such as the difficulty renaming
> pages, and finding unlinked pages.  In order to use it
> the same way as a discussion list, you simply go to
> http://wwwdev.itforum.be/phpwiki/index.php?RecentChanges,
> a bit the same way you read a discussion list using
> web mail.

I can't use webmail from here.

> I really feel we should give it a try and abandon the
> mailinglist for a Wiki.  The people on the mailinglist
> are practically all techies who should not have
> difficulties mastering this new medium, but I think
> the problem we have now is that I'm not sure this
> PhpWiki 1.2 is the right solution at this moment.  So
> I'm anxiously waiting for your feedback,

Unless there's an alternative mode of access through mail or nntp
there are technical issues[0] that will prevent me from using a
web-only solution. If there's a workaround I'm all ears.

Emile

[0] which I can't/won't discuss here. If you need infor to get me a
workaround, contact me. I can't address general curiousity on this
matter, sorry.



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