[ox] Re: [ox-en] Survey about wiki engines
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:21:35 +0200
Hi lists!
I'll respond in English so more people can read it.
6 days ago Thomas U =?iso-8859-1?q?Gr=FCttm=FCller?= wrote:
Stefan Merten has recently claimed on [pox] that most of the Oekonuxees
preferred MoinMoin.
ThomasUG misrepresents me often and this seems to me close to a lie -
as everyone can check on
http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/liste/archive/msg04957.html
I'm not correcting this any more because I learned it is pointless.
However, this time I hope this private remark is allowed.
However, this is not my impression. As I see it, most
people prefer MediaWiki.
The question as has been asked really has little to do with an Oekonux
Wiki. Indeed if people are asked which operating system they prefer
they will answer Windows - just because they know it. Nonetheless
there are reasons to think that using Free Software *might* be better
for them. So if this survey is done as an aid for an decision making
process this is the completely wrong question. Especially because when
we talk of Free Software the question
[ ] MoinMoin.
[ ] MediaWiki.
is completely wrong. This question would be correct if you had to
decide between a horse or a car. Both are entities which are largely
fixed and though they both can transport people there are a number of
features which are inalienable to each entity.
Free Software is different here. All software is by its very nature a
very flexible thing. Free Software where you have access to the
sources and can change them is even more flexible. This is even more
true if a piece of software is created with flexibility and
extensibility in mind.
Thus the question
[ ] MoinMoin.
[ ] MediaWiki.
basically comes down to
[ ] Python based Wiki engine based on a file system with flexibility
and extensibility as one of its guiding principles.
[ ] PHP based Wiki engine based on MySQL supporting a dominant
infrastructure and little reason to offer flexibility.
I wonder how many people who participated in the survey would have
decided their vote if they would have been asked this question.
If we try to use the survey as a help for a decision making process
the questions need some additions.
[ ] Python based Wiki engine based on a file system with flexibility
and extensibility as one of its guiding principles. Also a Wiki
engine which has a lot of external support as well as someone
being part of Oekonux ready and able to extend the engine in
ways useful for the project.
[ ] PHP based Wiki engine based on MySQL supporting a dominant
infrastructure and little reason to offer flexibility. Also a
Wiki engine with no one offering technical support in the
project.
Moreover a Wiki engine may serve many needs. For an Oekonux Wiki to be
most useful we need to identify these needs. We did this on [pox] and
the result is now on
http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Project/Wiki/Requirements
(Not completely up-to-date because my knowledge about MediaWiki
improved meanwhile.) Please note that this is the result of a
dicussion which started a year ago. If you take this also into account
the question would probably read:
[ ] Python based Wiki engine based on a file system with flexibility
and extensibility as one of its guiding principles. Also a Wiki
engine which has a lot of external support as well as someone
being part of Oekonux ready and able to extend the engine in
ways useful for the project. Also a Wiki engine which supports
many of the requirements found and for the missing requirements
there is good hope to find working solutions.
[ ] PHP based Wiki engine based on MySQL supporting a dominant
infrastructure and little reason to offer flexibility. Also a
Wiki engine with no one offering technical support in the
project. Also a Wiki engine which implements only a few of the
identified requirements and little to no hope that the remaining
requirements are implemented somehow.
I wonder how people had answered to these questions.
Also there have been taken actions already to improve MoinMoin to
please people used to MediaWiki. For a quick impression check
http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Project/Wiki/MediaWikiFAQ
where in particular is explained how a considerable subset of
MediaWiki markup can be used. In light of this the questions would
have been:
[ ] Python based Wiki engine based on a file system with flexibility
and extensibility as one of its guiding principles. Also a Wiki
engine which has a lot of external support as well as someone
being part of Oekonux ready and able to extend the engine in
ways useful for the project. Also a Wiki engine which supports
many of the requirements found and for the missing requirements
there is good hope to find working solutions. In particular the
markup of other wikis can be supported and a considerable subset
of the MediaWiki markup is already supported.
[ ] PHP based Wiki engine based on MySQL supporting a dominant
infrastructure and little reason to offer flexibility. Also a
Wiki engine with no one offering technical support in the
project. Also a Wiki engine which implements only a few of the
identified requirements and little to no hope that the remaining
requirements are implemented somehow.
Again I wonder how people had answered to these questions.
Indeed the question which *have* been actually asked by ThomasUG
remind me much of how modern democracies work. Instead of two software
tools people are asked to decide between two persons (yeah it's
parties but IMHO people in media society mostly decide because of
persons). In a way ThomasUG's survey is a good example how a survey
can be used to manipulate people.
Anyway. The decision is made now and MoinMoin is used as the Wiki
engine for the Wiki which is supported by Project Oekonux. It will be
extended and modified to make it the most useful tool for this
particular purpose.
Personally I will help the Oekonux Wiki by copying the pages from the
existing Wikis - which will be now much easier because there is a
parser for MediaWiki syntax. I will announce when I will start the
copy so people can freeze their work on the existing Wikis and take it
up again after the copy in the Oekonux Wiki. Also I'll do a couple of
other things to fulfill more of the requirements such as creating page
templates.
Beyond that to my perception there are two questions which need to be
answered. Which license to use for the Oekonux Wiki and which
structure should be used. Both are questions which are completely
(license) or largely (structure) independent from the Wiki engine
because any Wiki engine can be used for any license and (nearly) any
structure. However, IMHO none of these questions are show stoppers for
using the Oekonux Wiki which can also be done right now. For people
like me who don't care too much about the exact license as long as it
is free the license doesn't matter anyway. And structure can be
changed at any time to fit the policy in place then.
I think it does not make sense to respond to all the points which
have been made in the responses to the survey. I think most of this is
answered above. The only thing which comes to my mind mentioning is
that there is some code to support votes in MoinMoin. I didn't try it
out but if votes shall be used to get pictures of the opinion I'd be
ready to check this out.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
reached my mailbox since yesterday evening.
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