On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 11:52:10 +0200, David Neary <dneary@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Solution: For a given topic, create a wikipage. Make a start on > it (sketch paragraphs/sections, basically set up the bare bones > of what is needed). And then propose that lots of people make > small contributions to it. > > We have a wiki (many people might not know that - it's at > http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp), which allows just such collaborative > effort to take place. [...] A wiki is nice for drafting some things, but I am not too fond of using it for the help system: it would be OK for discussing some ideas, but not for publishing the final result. A wiki makes it too easy to add lots of WikiWords that remain empty or unmaintained for a long time. Unless there is a strong community interested in keeping the wiki up-to-date and refactoring old entries, many wikis end up being a collection of very valuable contributions mixed with content-free pages. Unfortunately, most visitors do not know which WikiWords are interesting and which ones are not, so it is not always easy for them to find what they are looking for. Now, don't get me wrong: I like wikis in general. But I doubt that a GIMP wiki will really take off and keep on running for a long time (picture me skeptical about "if you build it, they will come" - or more specifically "they will keep on coming"). We already have enough problems getting contributors for any part of the GIMP (application, plug-ins, help system, web site) so we should be careful about introducing a new area in which people could invest some time. A GIMP wiki can be very useful for discussing drafts and proposing new content that will eventually be migrated to the help system or to the main web site, but the content would have to be migrated over to its destination instead of staying on the wiki. Otherwise, I am afraid that it would sooner or later lose focus. That's all IMHO, of course. If I am the only dissenting voice, you can ignore me. ;-) In fact, I hope that I am wrong and that we can have a strong community of contributors. -Raphaël
