[ruby-talk:4807] Re: Wiki

> The classic Wiki at c2.com started of as a place for people to discuss
> and collaborate on patterns. It was a wonderful medium for the job:
> people would post ideas, and others would then add things and change
> things. It was very much a community process, and it developed a loyal
> and active following.
>
> Unfortunately, the unrestricted nature of the Wiki has lead to
> problems. It takes a certain mentality or philosophy to work on a
> Wiki: you have to view it as a place to collaborate on developing
> ideas. Instead, many people now use it to hold discussions, basically
> threading comments in the same way that you do on a mailing list or
> newsgroup. Much of the original style has gone.

True enough.  It's user base probably became too broad as did the content.
I still find the S/N reasonable however.

> I personally feel that a Wiki is a great place for people to develop
> joint ideas. If I were collaborating in the development of a Ruby
> module with people all over the world, I'd suggest setting up a
> private Wiki where we could archive our thoughts.
>
> For the kind of general question and answer stuff that goes on here,
> though, I don't think a Wiki would help.
>
> However, I'm happy to be proven wrong: I like working on Wikis.

I like mailing lists for discussion but they don't cross reference well.
Wiki's can be nice for extracting out some of the more general responses
into a more permanent place.  With mailing lists once a thread is over you
tend to loose track of the information very quickly.  Even if it is archived
the information is often hard to find again because it's not cross
referenced.

Given that one is set-up at todo.org now we can just wait and see what
emerges.

Regards,

    Glen