[linux-audio-user] I'm tired of being a moron

[tim hall]

Last Thursday 12 August 2004 17:39, John Check was like:
> On Thursday 12 August 2004 06:31 am, tim hall wrote:
> > Last Thursday 12 August 2004 01:12, John Check was like:
> > > On Wednesday 11 August 2004 06:16 am, tim hall wrote:
> > > > Last Wednesday 11 August 2004 06:44, John Check was like:
> > > > > I'm sure I'll get flamed, but wikis leave a lot to be desired as
> > > > > primary documentation. There are ways to address this, but they're
> > > > > obvious. At least to me.
> > > >
> > > > It's not primary documentation, The links are ;-)
> > >
> > > I meant in general, not specific to Agnula.
> > >
> > > > This is due to the fact that I'm not a primary documenter for AGNULA,
> > > > I'm just using the WIKIs as a talking shop and a place to gather
> > > > together information so I can post shorter links. Contributions are
> > > > welcome ;-)
> > >
> > > As long as you didn't ask ;) How does the stuff from the wiki find it's
> > > way into the primary doco?
> >
> > Probably by me converting it to HTML (?)
> > John, I'm not understanding your point here.
> > If this is more than a personal dislike of WIKI I really would appreciate
> > a bigger clue :-] [if really OT: Offlist is OK]
>
> That's not too far off the mark. I don't dislike them, per se. Wiki's are a
> great concept, but the way they're used in practice makes an already bad
> situation worse. There is already an overwhelming amount of doco, and it's
> disorganized. This is of course, not something particular to linux audio.
> As your reply indicates, wikis can be culled for good information which can
> be brought into the primary doco, but it's not sexy, so whether it gets
> done or not is a crapshoot for any given project.

I can see your point.

> I was being vague because the concept is still being tuned, and I'm busy
> with some archival work just now, but I mentioned off list to Dave Phillips
> about doing something along the lines of linux-sound.org, but adding MIDI
> implementation charts and an API support matrix with a reporting system to
> make it easy for projects to keep they stuff up to date, then linking to
> projects Wikis and main doco from there. IOW if I want a sequencer with foo
> & bar, a search returns appropriate hits ranked by development status with
> direct links. Of course the weak spot there is getting people to use it;
> That's the same problem Wiki's have, but they're conceptually too general.
> As it stands now, it just takes too much time to evaluate what's out there
> for linux music/audio to get any serious traction.
> Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to denigrate anybody's hard work, but I
> see a lot of things that make the current situation untenable from a
> business context. It's potentially good for me, but bad for everybody else
> that's interested in linux audio as a tool and not interested in the
> geekery aspects.

Thanks. Currently I'm playing with WIKI, it's easy to use and fun. What you're 
talking about is somewhat beyond my ken, but I would be happy to use some 
better system if it meant better documentation. The randomness factor is part 
of what makes the documentation hard to get through. A system which easily 
highlighted what documentation was either missing or duplicated would be a 
valuable resource for potential authors too. I shan't waste my time getting 
too much into WIKI if it's really not the way to go. I'm not attached to the 
means.

cheers

tim hall