#wiki:nixos.org on Matrix
If you would like to be automatically redirected from nixos.wiki to wiki.nixos.org locally, check out Redirector and this Gist: Redirection settings for the NixOS Wiki · GitHub
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Hello, wiki.nixos.org maintainer here,
I would like to ask that everyone refrains from taking hostile actions towards the unofficial wiki. In absolutely no case is it okay to go and pollute the work of the old wiki’s maintainers, we do not want to foster a spirit of conflict in this community.
I am glad to see people being enthusiastic about the official wiki, and I would like to invite everyone to focus their energy into making this new wiki attracting and filled with quality content. If everyone focuses their energy on positive actions towards the new wiki, success will undoubtedly follow.
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Still unsure why this is fundamentally an issue to help the user to quickly find the wiki, that is just another official source of information… but anyway.
Sure, git is theoretically great, and fits nicely with content that must be carefully checked like code. But it is, in my experience, way too slow for anything where many minor changes are made like in a documentation (at least given the man (and woman 
) power of NixOs). For instance, I once sent a ~3 line PR to simply document the <nixpkgs> syntax nixos/doc: documentation angle bracket syntax by tobiasBora · Pull Request #63033 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub and that was quite a journey. First just to send the changes, you need to understand the heavy xml syntax and compile some stuff (that must be part of the PR, which makes it horrible to review). Then, you need to know git & PR, then you need to wait for review: the first review I got was 4 months later! (Not blaming anyone but the process) And of course, as Nix reviewers care a lot about details (a bit too much I think but it’s another topic), they say “LGTM, but can you change this minor detail”. This adds another round of getting again used to the compilation process (I slept a few night in 4 months… and my focus had changed as well) and waiting for reviews, that will again pin minor details… and it creates so much time, efforts, and frustrations for so few changes… and at the end the PR never got merged as someone else fixed it elsewhere. At least in wiki we don’t have this barrier as anyone can fix the details straight when they see them (often it takes more time to ask someone to apply the fix that fixing it directly), and I think it’s fair to give it a chance 
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No github bug tracking system that can be indexed by search engines?
EDIT
Seems like the relevant github is GitHub - NixOS/nixos-wiki-infra: This project contains the setup of https://wiki.nixos.org
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Also, completely unrelated, but:
- Would it be possible to provide a wiki “function” to provide link to the manual, and possibly an “information” green box with a content like
You may also find additional content about XXX in the official manual <link to the good section of the manual>? I’m afraid that hardcoding the url would break if the manual goes to another page. - Would it be possible to add a category “Language”, as I guess an important fraction of the wiki will describe how to deal with Python/Java/… in Nix, and it is not clear (to me at least) in which category this should go otherwise. It would also help to create a page listing all languages.
Thread has gotten pretty long so dont know if this was already mentioned. There are few module docs in Nixpkgs targeting specific modules, often written by maintainers themselves because docstrings aren’t enough.
E.g.
Can we possibly auto-genrate wiki pages for them and linking back to nixpkgs? So source of truth remains at the source code, but still benefits from SEO and discoverability of wiki.
Unsure on how much effort would be for translation. Might want to limit to unstable/stable branches to reduce page churn. Also want to limit write access to auto generated pages to not lose user changes to wiki on next page gen.
Just something to think about. I don’t know anything about mediawiki, but will happily work on it if people think its a good idea.
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I agree this would be cool to have, this is along what I was proposing in:
Technically, speaking, it seems like this plugin allows the wiki to embed external content with something as simple as
{{#embed:github.com/org/repo/blob/master/hi.md}}
It seems to even work to include a code file.
We can maybe use this in the wiki to avoid code duplication while allowing users to edit the page?
This can even work for other documentation providing we can “compile” it first to markdown.
Those are part of the NixOS manual. We just need to carry out the plan to split the manual into multiple pages for SEO.
5 Likes
(EDIT: sorry, I misread your message and thought you were a maintainer of the old wiki) I definitely don’t want to take any hostile actions against the old wiki (that I both used and tried to improve)… but I still don’t understand why it would be bad to suggest users to check the new wiki with a link like @MikulasVanousek added (maybe with a lack of coordination, possibly explaining why someone removed the links), as it leaves the original content unchanged. The current status (official vs yours that is better referenced by search engines) will inevitably lead to a useless fork of the documentation, which will result in users reading outdated documentation. I guess you can agree, Nix does not need something like that. So, to maintain an healthy spirit, could you please consider adding a link suggesting users to additionally read the official Wiki?
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We do not control the old wiki and their owner has been unwilling to cooperate on this, how do you suggest to do this?
Oh, my bad, I read @JulienMalka 's message to quickly, I thought he was a maintainer of the old wiki, and I thought he reverted the changes of @MikulasVanousek. In my opinion, @MikulasVanousek’s code was the best strategy to solve this issue (and it does not harm the old wiki’s content at all)… but seems like someone reverted this changed, no idea who then…
The owner of the wiki reverted this change.
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That’s really sad and, IMHO, quite selfish. Not sure what to do then, except from regularly adding this warning manually, and trying to get the official wiki better referenced.
On a different topic, I see the wiki as a great opportunity to translate the documentation (for now, NixOs’s documentation is very english-orientated). But so far I can’t see a way to add a translation on Wiki’s page. Could the maintainer enable this option?
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I just tried to sign up for the Wiki using my Github account but it requests permission to act on my behalf.
Why?
It’s a limitation of GitHub. We don’t request any permissions from your account: GitHub - NixOS/nixos-wiki-infra: This project contains the setup of https://wiki.nixos.org
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Just thought I should mention this userscript that redirects you to the new wiki when accessing the old wiki. It’s linked to by the official wiki’s FAQ if anyone’s interested.
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You can also do this with the Redirector extension as I did. Here’s my Redirector.json which you can import:
{
"createdBy": "Redirector v3.5.3",
"createdAt": "2024-07-11T16:10:24.762Z",
"redirects": [
{
"description": "Redirect old wiki to new one",
"exampleUrl": "https://nixos.wiki/wiki/some-word-that-matches-wildcard",
"exampleResult": "https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/some-word-that-matches-wildcard",
"error": null,
"includePattern": "https://nixos.wiki/wiki/*",
"excludePattern": "",
"patternDesc": "Anything after nixos.wiki/wiki redirects to the same page on wiki.nixos.org",
"redirectUrl": "https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/$1",
"patternType": "W",
"processMatches": "noProcessing",
"disabled": false,
"grouped": false,
"appliesTo": [
"main_frame"
]
}
]
}
3 Likes