[m-dev.] New wiki

[Zoltan Somogyi]

On Sat, 14 Mar 2015 23:24:42 +1100, Paul Bone <paul at bone.id.au> wrote:
> The wiki is inteded for:
>     + A better / more complete FAQ
>     + Example code that demonstrates how to use some features
>     + Guides for common tasks
>     + More detailed description of Mercury features, although these should
>       be documented properly a more guided style can suplement the reference
>       manual style.

Why can't this information be included in our current web pages?

> I also suggest moving the information that's currently in compiler/notes/*,
> other developer documentation, the FAQ and possibly the discussions
> repsitory to the Wiki.

I would be strongly against moving any information that is currently
under version control into a wiki that does not have any version control.

I also think it it a very bad idea to a use a Google or Yahoo id as the
sign-in mechanism, as in the current wiki setup. Having grown up under
communism, I am allergic to any attempt at universal surveillance.
Since I don't wish to live a stone-age life in the middle of a desert, I may
not be able to avoid the NSA, but I would like to at least minimize the number
of organizations that can sell my personal information to bad people,
a category that I consider to include advertisers and most politicians
as well as criminals.

I also don't see the point of such an id system. It does not prevent
vandalism; all it can do is tell us the user-id of the vandal, which we
cannot turn into a real-world id, and even if we could, we couldn't do
anything useful with that information. The only way to prevent vandalism
is to have someone trusted (one of us developers, or someone like Matt Giuca)
check all changes before publishing them. And for that, we don't strictly
need a wiki; our usual review and pull-request mechanisms would do.
The only thing a wiki can do is make it somewhat easier for external
contributors. That is a worthy objective, but in my opinion less important
than having this information under version control. Does this wiki
provide some form of version control, such as a record of past versions?

Zoltan.