Another rant

[Tom H]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 9:03 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 November 2017 at 14:46, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:


>> 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."
>
> Yes, but some distros are more community-oriented than others. SUSE is
> primarily a paid, corporate product.
>
>> 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.
>
> Not enough if your users are paying you lots for support. :-(
>
> Again, this is just my take, not any kind of official company statement.

This does doesn't apply to OpenSUSE, only to SUSE.


>> 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.
>
> Because things like Arch and Gentoo aren't for noobs. They're for
> experts and those who want to get their hands dirty.

Arch and Gentoo like to promote themselves as not for noobs but it's
more of macho posturing than reality. But what does this have to do
with maintaining a wiki? Also the Gentoo wiki's far less useful than
it used to be. Given that it's more complex than Arch, this doesn't
fit into your complex-distribution-means-good-wiki, if that's what you
meant with the above.


>> 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.
>
> Fair point. I presume they know what they're doing but their systems
> for voting, moderation etc. seem very strange to me.

I agree that the voting and moderation are weird; especially the moderation.


>> +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...
>
> Bear in mind that Win10 is a moving target. It has had 3 major
> editions so far: original, Anniversary Update, Creator's Update, and
> now Fall Creator's Update. All are a bit different. More and more
> stuff is being moved into the Modern apps, Modern settings app, etc.,
> and old Win7-style stuff is disappearing.
>
> For the best experience, keep it as up to date as you can.

Thanks. I didn't know that there were so many versions. I hope that
they fix their interface schizophrenia sooner rather than later.

I've wiped out the Windows partitions. I was kicking just its tyres
when I first received the laptop.