On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:43:13 +0100
Rubin <rubin@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> I have an idea that might be good. Wouldn't it be nice to
> use wikis as part of the port specific pages? This would
> alleviate the problem of stale ports appearing as being in 
> guaranteed working condition with the last version of
> NetBSD. People could easily post their experiences with for
> example trying to boot NetBSD 3 on a Playstation 2, and
> describe some tricks and stuff related to it. 

If I understand, the proposition is for a documentation wiki, not HTTP
discussion forums?  If this is clear, and carefully stated to users, it
indeed might be nice, providing that human resources are available to
track changes and moderate them to revert spam and vandalism, as well as
upgrade the wiki software, and hardware resources available to host the
history database...

We do have a mailing list for each port, as well as good archives for
them (available through HTTP (and mbox format?))...  A wiki could be
useful if it was used for a page to summarize the current status of
hardware support (drivers), etc, and possibly documentation addendums,
but I doubt that it would be a good idea to use them to discuss. If
people are allowed to post messages there, probably that newbies will
tend to communicate over the HTTP interface, making the mailing lists
less used as they already are (and the existing archiving system
eventually useless)?

With RSS an HTTP system could potentially become as useful as the
current lists and the systems possibly integrated;  it should however not
prevent people from using conventional mailing lists, though, nor
replace them.

Matt

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