New Mercurial Website

[Adrian Buehlmann]

Please keep discussion on-list, so I'm cc-ing the list again

On 02.11.2009 15:52, Steve Losh wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:
>>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>>>> one will update it.
>>>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,
>>>>> structure,
>>>>> content and more quality control.
>>>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and  
>>>> structure?
>>>>
>>>> Where exactly?
>>>>
>>> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The
>>> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there
>>> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there,  
>>> they're
>>> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>>>
>>> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and
>>> not a phone, if you like.
>>>
>>>> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>>>>
>>>>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on
>>>>> our
>>>>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
>>>>> date.
>>>> Not at all.
>>> Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the version
>>> listed on the MercurialAPI page.
>>>
>>> Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been
>>> updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version
>>> 1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely *wrong*
>>> -- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial it  
>>> says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.
>>>
>> And you think that can be improved by starting a second site,
>> which is not part of the wiki, so that everyone wanting to
>> update things has to send patches?
> 
> For the "incoherent structure" part of things: absolutely. If a small  
> group is reviewing and/or making changes there's less of a chance that  
> subheadings will be added for some sections and not for others (for  
> example). The site will feel more cohesive which is a good thing to  
> present to first-time users.
> 
> Git and Bazaar both have good-looking frontend sites with separate  
> wikis, so the concept is certainly not something new and can  
> definitely work.
> 
> For the out-of-date part, I'm not sure. I think the smaller size of  
> the frontend site, and the fact that there are actually people  
> responsible for it (as opposed to the wiki where it's easier to say  
> "eh, someone else can update this") will help in that respect.
> 

So you want to have the page MercurialAPI in a static page instead
of in the wiki?

I don't think that's exactly a good idea.

In any case, I'm surprised about what people think about the wiki.

It seems like updating the wiki is no longer appreciated. If that's
the case, then I certainly won't waste my time there any more if the
wiki is in such a lousy state that the project needs to instate
another crew that ignores patches.

And I certainly won't start to send patches for html pages that
are reviewed by a single person simply to learn that they are
rejected after 48 hours. No thanks.

It's funny that much bigger projects manage to have their front
pages as a wiki page. Have a look at Wikipedia.