Subject: Advocacy wiki

From: Jim Nasby <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:36:03 -0700

Trying to put together my "What's New in 8.3" lightning talk, I'm  
surprised at the complete lack of advocacy resources. What little I  
can find is spread all over the place.

In order to make life easier for others who are creating PostgreSQL  
presentations by providing links/copies of past presentations, as  
well as useful images, etc. ISTM the best way to do this is with a wiki.

So, should I setup some pages on the developer wiki for this, or  
should we have a separate advocacy wiki? I'm leaning towards a  
separate one so that anyone can add resources...
--
Jim Nasby                                            [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

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From: "Magnus Hagander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:48:30 +0200

> separate one so that anyone can add resources...

I'm not going to comment on the general need. but if we're going to do that then please don't use the dev one, even though i see others already use it for such 
stuff. we absolutely do not want even more stuff loading up that machine at the moment. It's bad enough having the dev wiki where it is.

/Magnus

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From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:49:55 +0100

> stuff. we absolutely do not want even more stuff loading up that machine at the moment. It's bad enough having the dev wiki where it is.

It wasn't long ago that we 'rebranded' the developer wiki as a project 
wiki specifically to allow Josh B. To use if for advocacy purposes - in 
fact, the opening para now reads:

"Please note that this is a PostgreSQL developer resource for use by 
people hacking the PostgreSQL source code or working on other areas of 
the project such as advocacy or the websites."

I forget which list it was discussed on, but I'm pretty sure even you 
thought it was the best idea.

/D

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From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:10:46 +0200

On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 08:49:55AM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> >I'm not going to comment on the general need. but if we're going to do 
> >that then please don't use the dev one, even though i see others already 
> >use it for such stuff. we absolutely do not want even more stuff loading 
> >up that machine at the moment. It's bad enough having the dev wiki where 
> >it is.
> 

Actually, at the time we were discussing either temporary or "just for
-advocacy internals". Maybe that's what's being referred to at this time,
in which case I'm fine with it. But I read this as information that's for
end-users as well, and we specifically said we don't want that on the wiki.
(It was for some reason discussed on -advocacy instead of -www :P)

Now, in general it seems that there is more and more info going on the wiki
that's intended for end-users. That wasn't the original itent, but if
that's what people want then so be it. But in that case, I'm very
uncomfortable with where and how the wiki is currently set up, and I think
that should be solved before we start moving in that direction in a more
official way.

//Magnus

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From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:15:56 +0100

> (It was for some reason discussed on -advocacy instead of -www :P)

No, stuff for end users was specifically excluded from the wiki from the 
outset - and that should remain the case. We don't want 'unofficial' 
docs springing up all over the place - that's what techdocs is for.

/D

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From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 04:29:36 -0400

Dave Page wrote:

> outset - and that should remain the case. We don't want 'unofficial' docs 
> springing up all over the place - that's what techdocs is for.

Doesn't that ring the bell that maybe techdocs is not as great as we
think?  If people are desperately looking at alternatives, that may mean
something.  What is it?

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

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From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:34:03 +0100

> think?  If people are desperately looking at alternatives, that may mean

Afaik there are no outstanding bugs or feature requests with Techdocs - 
however it does require moderation before docs are published. Perhaps 
thats what people are trying to avoid?

Regards, Dave

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From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:19:15 -0400

Greg Smith added to Cc:

Dave Page wrote:
> however it does require moderation before docs are published. Perhaps thats 
> what people are trying to avoid?

Maybe people don't _realize_ that techdocs is "a wiki", with on-line
editability and all.  Why else would be Greg Smith resisting moving his
MySQL doc to it right away?

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

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From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:48:53 +0100

> MySQL doc to it right away?

It's not a wiki though - it's designed for a single person to modify and
submit a document for inclusion once moderated. This is the case for
much of the techdocs content which may be presentations people have
produced, or howto's they've written during their daily work (perhaps
whilst figuring out a migration from another DBMS).

It's not suitable for collaborating while writing the document, but the
wiki is.

Greg has already said that once written, he intends to move the doc to
techdocs - that sounds like a fine plan to me.

Regards, Dave.

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From: Jim Nasby <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:12:50 -0700

> (It was for some reason discussed on -advocacy instead of -www :P)

My intention was indeed that general community members could make use  
of this. I want to make it easier for other people to advocate  
PostgreSQL, and part of that is providing a place where they can  
upload presentations, photos, etc. This is something that should be  
collaborative in nature, so I don't think techdocs is a good place  
for it.
--
Jim Nasby                                            [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

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From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:20:14 -0300

- --On Wednesday, July 25, 2007 18:12:50 -0700 Jim Nasby <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> My intention was indeed that general community members could make use of
> this. I want to make it easier for other people to advocate PostgreSQL, and
> part of that is providing a place where they can upload presentations,
> photos, etc. This is something that should be collaborative in nature, so I
> don't think techdocs is a good place for it.

I'd like to move the developer wiki to it own VPS, and out of the core 
developer one, just to save against potential 'web based security holes' ... 
would it be an idea ot setup a seperate 'advocacy wiki', along the lines of 
what you are suggesting (with suitable moderation / review) from the developer 
one, which would remian closed?

And, do you  have the time / energy to actually moderate such a beast ... I 
think one of the bigger fears is ppl uploading mis-information into such an 
"official wiki", and I think that fear is fairly justified with the amount of 
spam-bots going around filling in forms left-right-and-center ...

Personally, I can see the benefit of what you are suggesting, but do think that 
a certain amount of control / moderation is required to keep it clean and 
accurate ... then again, maybe we want Al Dev back again?  For those that don't 
know the name, he into 'creative technical writing' that is akin to 'the aliens 
are coming' :)

- ----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . [email-masked]                              MSN . [email-masked]
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664

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From: Jim Nasby <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:24:11 -0700

> one, which would remian closed?

Perhaps we should stop drawing the line at "developer" and "advocacy"  
and just have one wiki that's open to public edits and one that's not.

> spam-bots going around filling in forms left-right-and-center ...

If it's dependent on a single person to keep it clean, we're doing  
something wrong. :)

But yes, I'll certainly help in that regard.

> know the name, he into 'creative technical writing' that is akin to  

Sure, we'll have to keep an eye on it. It might also be a good idea  
to make it clear that it's unofficial.
--
Jim Nasby                                            [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

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From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:13:31 +0200

> and just have one wiki that's open to public edits and one that's not.

Just file me in the group that don't want a publically-editable wiki at all
;-)
Apart from that, I don't think we need more than one wiki. Two wikis is
twice the maintenance effort, for very little gain. Better to structure one
of them to deal with both sets of content.

> If it's dependent on a single person to keep it clean, we're doing  

Yeah, you never looked at the docs comment sbefore, did you? There was
whole team of people supposed to keep taht clean, and we had *thousands* of
spam and support questions in there. The rate was at least 3 junk for every
one good.

Now we require a login (that it's really easy to sign up for), and spam is
down to pretty much zero and the good-to-bad ratio is *much* better.

Bottom line: in theory it works fine, but I doubt it'll work in practice.
It's been proven not to before.

//Magnus

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From: Decibel! <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:02:31 -0700

> It's been proven not to before.

We should absolutely require a login/account... my point was that  
restricting all editing to just official community members is too  
restrictive for a lot of things.
-- 
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        [email-masked]
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)