Re: [arch-general] MediaWiki extension and fix pull request
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 12/16/2014 01:42 AM, Dario Giovannetti wrote:
Just a quick clarification from work, I never showed support for installing the cite extension, and I'm aware that it's developers, and not TUs, that have access to the repos.
This is why I specified "especially me". But I admit, you haven't
indeed explicitly mentioned the idea to install that extension, though
without completely refusing that idea ;-)
And for plea of that Cite extension:
TL;DR: The keyword citation method from the Cite extension is better.
I *do* see the need to explicitly be able to cite an article at the
exact location where we made an assumption in our content. Using a
keyword and putting the detailed source at the end of the document
seems the best way if the link is used at several location in the
document.
As an example, if we cite some non tested assumptions we take from an
article that we rapidly adapted to the Arch Linux world, the reader
might be able to inform the original author, if he wants to, that the
solution works or not. With a dedicated "see also" at the end of the
document, it is less likely to happen.
And as already written in the discussion on the wiki, "see also"
implies that some more detailed information is available in that
linked article, which is not necessary the case. A short blog post
might just explain a really simple trick we completely integrated in
our content (nearly copy-pasted).
We are not aiming to provide and duplicate documentation from
upstream. I personally don't like that idea, excepted if this leads to
a disjointed article with bunch of references everywhere (e.g. the
VirtualBox article I rewrite). In the case of DKMS for example, you
cannot actually find any recent and updated "starting guide" excepted
this old unnecessary very long one [1] dating back from 2003. The
Wikipedia page is nearly non existent, and upstream does only provide
a technical indigestible man page. Ubuntu does provide some more
general technical guide, but again not really adapted to Arch [2].
Regards,
[1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6896?page=0,0
[2] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DKMS
- --
William Gathoye
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:13 PM, William Gathoye
TL;DR: The keyword citation method from the Cite extension is better.
Are there arguments for not implementing the Cite extension? IMHO, it's a simple, valuable parser in MediaWiki installs that allows easy inline referencing to upstream technical documentation without distracting from the work itself. It would encourage wiki contributors to reference the deep-dive technical information when presenting the overall concept in a consumable fashion (like systemd units). Example of a minor contribution I made to NFS outlining debugging that references 6 sources which could have used Cite more effectively: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NFS/Troubleshooting#Debugging The Cite extension would allow the inline referencing of the upstream technical material without having to manually maintain the References section and put the links inline where they belong with the presentation. It also encourages "don't just trust me, here's the link to the code" (or whatever) for certain subject matter. -te
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 12/16/2014 02:28 AM, Troy Engel wrote:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:13 PM, William Gathoye
wrote: TL;DR: The keyword citation method from the Cite extension is better.
Are there arguments for not implementing the Cite extension? No, they were argument in favour/for the Cite extension.
Actually I'm using the citations like this, as I don't like to have
links, authors inlined in the text. (so not really what you said
regarding inline citation).
Example :
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet<ref name=foo />, consectetur adipiscing
elit. Donec porta ligula eu pharetra pretium. Donec eu lacus ac purus
mattis tincidunt id in nunc. Donec rutrum turpis urna<ref name=foo />,
ut volutpat nisl consequat nec. Etiam in ultrices erat<ref name=bar />.
== References ==
<ref name=foo>John Doe, [http://example.com Blog article name], some
date. />
<ref name=foo>Linus Torvalds, [http://linux.com Linux foundation],
some date. />
Regards,
- --
William Gathoye
Honestly, I think if the Cite extension had been installed from the first years of the ArchWiki or so, it's very likely that today it would be used extensively and we would feel it like an indispensable tool. However, what we are instead doing is use plain inline links, e.g.: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet (see [http://example.com Blog article name]), consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec porta ligula eu pharetra pretium. Donec eu lacus ac purus mattis tincidunt id in nunc. Donec rutrum turpis urna[http://example.com], ut volutpat nisl consequat nec. Etiam in ultrices erat [http://linux.com Linux foundation]. Yes, this is uglier, but it's always worked ok, since, unlike on Wikipedia, we don't require to provide references for every single statement, so there shouldn't be the need to insert too many links. That said, I would be available for discussing the installation of that extension, as well as several others that would greatly facilitate the maintenance of the wiki, but the problem is that there's not enough workforce (i.e. Developers) to maintain the repo even as it is now; consider for example the fact that the current version of MediaWiki is 1.24, but we're still using 1.22 for undisclosed reasons; or see the wiki bug reports that have been opened for several months now, effectively discouraging opening new ones and instead making it necessary to find workarounds like the recently created MediaWiki:Archlinux.css page to fix some CSS bugs. Until the ArchWiki will find some more interested Developers to take care of it, I don't really think that any extensions will ever be installed, and that's why I'm trying to suggest viable alternatives like the inline links above, recommending to concentrate our efforts into writing the best articles that we can we the tools that are available now :) Dario (Kynikos)
participants (3)
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Dario Giovannetti
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Troy Engel
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William Gathoye