But we do believe it could be cool. One awesome feature is that we have automatic mirroring of the contents to a git repo at GitHub - nixlang-wiki/nixlang-wiki, making it both easier to move on if/when in the distant future I’m hit by a bus, and also making it easier to contribute/use without opening a browser.
And idk, we’re not aiming to replace any official wikis, or anything of the sort. We’re just having fun and seeing what can come of it. Feel free to register and contribute!
I wonder if we could consider leveraging the existing resources. I’m concerned that creating something new might lead to confusion for newcomers and disperse our Nix expertise too broadly.
There’s significant effort being put into consolidating our documentation in one central location. Venturing in a different direction might counteract these efforts.
I’d appreciate further insights on this matter, beyond the typical XKCD comic reference.
I can understand that there are most probably better alternative than Mediawiki (I really don’t know them), but is creating something new the right thing to do ?
Join the room, we(wiki 2 team, not nixlang.wiki team) have already tried to contact the current maintainer of the wiki many times (once officially) and he has refused to co-operate
@cafkafk have you considered the trade offs of starting a new project vs contributing to the official docs at https://nix.dev? It would be really nice IMO to focus efforts on an official resource, rather than spreading ourselves thin over x different projects.
The way I see it, there’s a very big amount of bureaucracy between me and adding to the “official” NixOS documentation. I’d much rather have as low a barrier to entry as possible (that’s both for me and other people wanting to contribute).
Further, it being “official”, to me at least means I have to deal with the sluggish NixOS apparatus. That means waiting eons for simple contemporary measures for moderation, such as a code of conduct, and simple things such as naming the default branch main still being controversial.
Further, it seemed to me, as an outsider, with information acquired through a very long game of telephone that the original wiki had some serious trouble with its maintainer. And even further, my understanding is that the documentation project had become a sort of battleground, with people with conflicting interests stalling the project.
Not being official means I can move faster, not being official means I can banish people who don’t respect others with an iron fist. These are very attractive qualities of going at it without being official.
@asymmetric on the cons side, the above + nix.dev seems to be have different goals than I do, and the structure seems to read more like a book than a loose web of useful information, which is what I really wanna have.
The pros: hosting costs being covered by open collective sounds attractive, but not attractive enough for now.
@roberth the name isn’t perfect, which is partially because my criteria for selection where mostly price of domain and memorability. But perfect is the enemy of good in these cases, I looked for domains that where good enough for a while and decided to get to work… perhaps a better domain will come up later. Also that page should be under nix/nix_run not nixos/nix_run.
Sure, but that wiki is so widespread that even if it is not hosted under nixos.org, it become official with the time. I even contributed to it thinking it was THE nix wiki.
I only started using NixOS a few months ago and have already contributed to nixos.wiki. I think its pretty clear that it is unofficial, especially after you see that some of the articles are all over the place. I admit I was slightly nervous that my change would be scrutinized, but in the end probably nobody cared.
I agree with the others that having fewer good resources is better than having more redundant incomplete resources.
The documentation team definitely doesn’t work that way! If you follow up on nix.dev (source) PR reviews, you’ll generally get good feedback and merges can be timely. We can also help out with Nix or Nixpkgs docs updates. Please consider joining the effort, we’d be very glad!
You talk about low barrier to access, but i still have to authenticate with github or create ‘another’ account…
all a wiki should do, is maybe have a capture to stop robo spam, that’s it. It’s not documentation, it’s a wiki…
But you shouldn’t need a login and anonymous edits should be allowed.
Who writes the Arch linux wiki, i swear to god, that thing is a master piece of wiki perfection…
the knowledge contained within well curated pages…is invaluable…
What is your based on, i like mediawiki, because i know the markdown…
and as @roberth said, nixlang.wiki is a very confusing domain.
thisistheofficalunofficalnix.wiki is much a better domain name IMHO.
interesting stuff.
may the best wiki win. I tend to use the ones with content on them, but having somewhere to dump all the solutions from this discourse forum might be a good idea.
That’s an oversight, you should be able to create and edit in the nix, nixos, and tricks subdirs now without being logged in.
Getting RBAC set up the right way is still a bit of back and forth, let me know if there are other permission issues!
wiki.js, mostly because its super easy to maintain, scale, and the git backup feature is very cool. Their next major version will also allow importing mediawiki articles, which might be useful to migrate content, although I’m not aware of the license of nixos.wiki.
