+1<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 4:13 AM, Ralph Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:johnson@cs.uiuc.edu">johnson@cs.uiuc.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I've used lots of wikis over the years, starting with the original<br>
<a href="http://c2.com" target="_blank">c2.com</a> wiki. While each had its unique features that made it<br>
interesting, basically they were all good. Wikis are cool and, when<br>
there is a community behind them, can be very powerful.<br>
<br>
The squeak wiki has fallen out of favor. It used to be extremely<br>
useful and was used a lot, it isn't used as much now. I don't think<br>
that its problems have much to do with the platform it is running on.<br>
While Mediawiki is certainly a very nice wiki, I think the problems of<br>
the Squeak wiki would be unchanged if it were a Mediawiki.<br>
<br>
So, what is wrong with the Squeak wiki? Why isn't it used as much?<br>
<br>
In my opinion, the problem is that, from a documentation point of<br>
view, there is no such thing as Squeak, rather, there are many<br>
versions of Squeak. Although there are some things they all have in<br>
common, they differ in some ways. If you make a separate wiki for<br>
each version, you fragment your community and have no way of dealing<br>
with duplicate pages. If you make a single wiki for them all, like<br>
the Squeak wiki did, you end up with lots of information that is still<br>
true for older versions but is no longer true for the latest. And<br>
since a lot of people are still running the older versions, you don't<br>
want to get rid of that information.<br>
<br>
The new way for making documentation, which is to treat it as source<br>
and to version it like source, solves these problems. It probably<br>
introduces some problems of its own, but I think it is probably the<br>
best alternative for creating good, long-lasting documentation for<br>
Squeak.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-Ralph<br>
<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br>