Hung up on wikis

[Corey Burger]

Hey All,

Ok, so lets drop the wiki name. Really these are web-based docs, well
formatted and mostly static. The advantage of webbased is easy adding
of further stuff as needed.

So for our task-based wiki docs, the current wiki needs some work. 

I personally favour a completely new wiki for one major reason: If
anyone has looked at recent changes on any wiki, you see a lot of
chaff or noise. If we have a wiki *just* for presentation quality
docs, then the *only* thing that will be appearing is doc related and
thus much much easier to quality control. I cannot underestimate how
much effect this will make upon the quality of our work. Coexisting
within the current wiki would cause major issue.

Now on the technical side of things:

1. Remove parenting
-This concept is too rigid, but a nice idea
-We can manual parenting and categories to achieve the same result
with more flexibility
2. Categories 
-These are similar idea to parenting, but diffent implementation
3. One markup language
-Probably the biggest issue. The 4? currently supported are confusing.
Another reason for moving to a new wiki. If we force a move to one
language, every page will have to be checked to make certain that it
is in the new/chosen markup
4. Removal of last editing by
-Why you ask? Doesn't look professional and can be seen by the user.
If you want to add authors, we can add it at the bottom of the doc
5.Better history
-Contrast this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shanghai_Pudong_International_Airport&curid=354666&action=history
with this:
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/FrontPage/diff
-Ouch is about all I can say
-We can do one better than wp. If we get some DHTML/JS foo to show all
the actual edits, but that is sort of bluesky.
6. Wasted space on page
-The current wiki wastes a lot of space. I run at 1280x1024, which is
much higher than most people. Even so, the actual text begins 1/4 the
way down my screen, once you take into consideration all the panel,
menus, etc.
-This is kind of out of our hands. Another reason to move wikis

And now I say why waste effort. There is a wiki engine that will do
all this, supports cs and js so we can make it look ubuntu-ized. That
engine is Mediawiki. It is also under active development. However, the
markup language might need to be extended, but it does support all
kinds of really neat stuff that I haven't played with.

Please add to this list. I/Enrico hope to have a list of specific and
concrete things that we can take to Canonical to get our wiki fixed.

Corey