Another rant

[Tom H]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 November 2017 at 08:30, Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:


>> The OpenSUSE wiki was something you could have a user page in and
>> easily add to. That's no longer the case for a long time.
>
> Yes. AIUI -- *not* an official statement -- there were, relatively
> speaking, few contributions, and the time required by staff to check
> and edit them, so it wasn't worth it, and they closed that channel
> off. Great shame, but if it was costing more than it saved -- I have
> no idea, this was long before my time -- then it was a pragmatic
> response.

Aren't wikis supposed to be user-contributed / user-edited /
user-proofed / user-curated? In Fedora and Gentoo (and I vaguely
remember Arch too), I pointed out an error on their respective wikis
and I was told "get an account and edit the page."

OpenSUSE's hurting its community without much gain. It could have a
"although hosted here, this is user-contributed" disclaimer on every
page if it's worried about accuracy and correctness.

I always wonder how Arch does it (and why others can't). Its wiki's
comprehensive and up to date. It's a rolling distribution so it
doesn't have to account for older releases. But I doubt that it's the
only reason.


>> For instance, if it wasn't for older wikis, I would never have gotten
>> my scanner running,
>>
>> because today this information is not being added.
>
> I've noted the same problem. Me, I blame fora, Stack Overflow, stuff
> like that.

Probably. There's often good information on Stack and similar
platforms but information's not as discoverable. Also, if I had to
pick one weakness, I'd nominate the fact that posts can be edited. So
you can read comment #N on a comment #N-m and #N-m's been edited to
account for #N but there's not enough history in either for you to
figure out what was posted initially and why it was partially or
completely wrong.


>> My amount of hours in Linux spent in frustration is about 3000x that
>> of Windows.
>
> Mine's the reverse. It's why I use it. But then I did tech support for
> Windows for ~25 years.

+1. I got a new laptop recently and I decided to use Windows before
wiping it out. It's at least as much work to set up as Ubuntu and the
interface inconsistencies are horrendous. For anything basic, you have
the Win10 interface but if you want a more advanced setting, you're
relegated to the Win7 interface. At least, unlike Gnome, you don't
have to figure out what the gsettings invocation is...