Status quo of Mercurial wiki

[Eric Larson]

At Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:01:17 +0100,
Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> 
> Since so many people seem to be disappointed about the
> wiki, I would like to know:
> 
> Why do those people not edit the wiki to improve it instead of
> just complaining about how bad the wiki is?
> 

When I first started using the wiki, it could be difficult to feel confident in the content. It was a default moinmoin template and some of the content could be inconsistent. Even when it wasn't actually inconsistent, as a new user, it was easy to feel as though it wasn't consistent. This is a very subjective opinion, but I think it is a valid usability concern with any wiki. A resource that anyone can edit means there is a potential chance that the page your looking at could be anything from a scratch page you found by mistake, a new proposal, or any number of non-working concepts that are most likey not intended for a user looking for documentation. 

With that in mind, simply editing the wiki doesn't help anything because there is still the question of what the canonical answer to a question is. Even when an answer is "it depends", knowing that you really have a choice and the software was designed to give you that choice allows a user to feel empowered as opposed to feeling like you might be setting yourself up to fail. I think wikis generally don't help users consider the content to be authoritative, which doesn't help navigate the new wealth of new options available when choosing a DVCS such as Mercurial. 

> What's the problem with editing the wiki?
> 
> Is it really that hard to edit the wiki?
> 

I can't say I've ever edited the Mercurial wiki, but that is primarily because I'm just a simple user. When I first started using Mercurial, the wiki was a valuable tool, but more often then not I would trust the red book to guide my way. This was because I knew the content was meant to be authoritative. While I can appreciate the wiki as both a CMS and a technique to keep documentation up to date, the new website provides more authoritative sources to help new users feel confident understanding the software as it was intended. I'm sure it would have been possible to do this with the wiki, but that wasn't what was decided. 

Personally, I think they did a great job and based on the recent comments regarding using the wiki, a better tactic would simply to be patient and continue to improve the wiki content. Both the wiki and the website are simply tools that speak to different audiences and should be appreciated/evaluated as such.

Just my two cents.

Eric Larson

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