New Mercurial Website

[Steve Losh]

Sorry, I hit send before I finished the last section.

On Nov 2, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com>  
wrote:

> 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 So actually the page is not out of date but completely  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.
>
Wikipedia is a special case because the wiki is the entire point of  
the site.

Even so, go to http://wikipedia.org/ (not en.wikipedia.org or another  
language) and the actual landing page IS a static page...