Improving the Wiki

[biolizard89]

The dot-bit.org wiki hasn't been updated in a long time, and I think it's probably scaring away potential users. As a first start, I would suggest having a list of Namecoin projects near the top of the page (.bit DNS, service authentication, maybe some other projects which are less mature?). I would also suggest having a list of implementations for each of those projects, linked to from that list of projects (e.g. the DNS project would list Convergence, NMControl, NmcSocks, NamecoinToBind; the service authentication project would list NameID and the OTR plugin).

Is there any interest in the above suggestions? Are there any other improvements to the wiki that would be useful?

[moa]

Maybe now is a good time to re-visit the bigger issue of a namecoin wiki proper.

khal has been good enough to allow dot-bit project wiki to be used as proxy for namecoin wiki but namecoin really needs it own wiki where dot-bit is linked as a sub project.

namecoin.info was the beginnings of that project I think. Much of the material on dot-bit wiki is dot-bit specific so can stay there but upgrading namecoin stuff you may as well do it on a proper namecoin wiki.

And yes, it needs to be done.

[biolizard89]

Maybe now is a good time to re-visit the bigger issue of a namecoin wiki proper.

khal has been good enough to allow dot-bit project wiki to be used as proxy for namecoin wiki but namecoin really needs it own wiki where dot-bit is linked as a sub project.

namecoin.info was the beginnings of that project I think. Much of the material on dot-bit wiki is dot-bit specific so can stay there but upgrading namecoin stuff you may as well do it on a proper namecoin wiki.

And yes, it needs to be done.

Yes, I think this is a discussion worth having.

My personal opinion is that keeping all Namecoin-related info (dot-bit and other stuff) on a single wiki would help avoid fragmentation of the community. We're already small enough, and generally the people in our community are interested in more than one project to some extent (I mainly work on the Convergence stuff but I'm really interested in NameID). Is there any reason to keep the dot-bit info on a separate wiki from the rest of the Namecoin projects? (I can't think of any, but my imagination isn't that great....) If we opt for a single wiki, should it be on dot-bit.org or namecoin.info? namecoin.info is a better URL in terms of relevance, but there are already a lot of incoming links to dot-bit.org, so maybe stay at dot-bit.org so that the incoming links stay valid?

Let's get everyone else's thoughts on this?

[virtual_master]

The project main site with news and the forum will remain here so there is no fragmentation.
A little bit redundancy, especially by wikis and tutorials is not bad.
It could be also a kind of specialization. In the main wiki here could remain a comprehensive, more technical information source for development. Other sites could address more newbies with tutorials or target other language and interest communities.
The Namecoin history project could also have his own wiki focused more on history aspects.
There could be a wiki focused on communication aspects, cross-information and integration in different communication protocols like Bitmessage, Pidgin OTR and Bytemail.
Just some ideas.

[biolizard89]

The project main site with news and the forum will remain here so there is no fragmentation.
A little bit redundancy, especially by wikis and tutorials is not bad.
It could be also a kind of specialization. In the main wiki here could remain a comprehensive, more technical information source for development. Other sites could address more newbies with tutorials or target other language and interest communities.
The Namecoin history project could also have his own wiki focused more on history aspects.
There could be a wiki focused on communication aspects, cross-information and integration in different communication protocols like Bitmessage, Pidgin OTR and Bytemail.
Just some ideas.

Having multiple wikis seems like fragmentation. A single wiki would IMO be better suited, as long as it's organized well. I'm interested in multiple Namecoin-related projects; I don't want to have to look through multiple wikis. No other open-source projects that I know of have multiple active wikis. I don't see any advantage to multiple wikis... am I missing something?

[virtual_master]

Having multiple wikis seems like fragmentation. A single wiki would IMO be better suited, as long as it's organized well. I'm interested in multiple Namecoin-related projects; I don't want to have to look through multiple wikis. No other open-source projects that I know of have multiple active wikis. I don't see any advantage to multiple wikis... am I missing something?

It is OK for me a central wiki.
But what happens if Khal dies and evrything is on his site ? What happens with Namecoin ?

[moa]

The project main site with news and the forum will remain here so there is no fragmentation.
A little bit redundancy, especially by wikis and tutorials is not bad.
It could be also a kind of specialization. In the main wiki here could remain a comprehensive, more technical information source for development. Other sites could address more newbies with tutorials or target other language and interest communities.
The Namecoin history project could also have his own wiki focused more on history aspects.
There could be a wiki focused on communication aspects, cross-information and integration in different communication protocols like Bitmessage, Pidgin OTR and Bytemail.
Just some ideas.

Having multiple wikis seems like fragmentation. A single wiki would IMO be better suited, as long as it's organized well. I'm interested in multiple Namecoin-related projects; I don't want to have to look through multiple wikis. No other open-source projects that I know of have multiple active wikis. I don't see any advantage to multiple wikis... am I missing something?

I agree that multiple wikis (fragmentation) are undesirable and more so because the project is so small at this stage. However, dot-bit will always be a sub-project of Namecoin, just by the construction of the architecture.

It has confused many noobs arriving at dot-bit wiki trying to find out about namecoin. I think it is because the hierachical order of the structure is not clear ... dot-bit seems to be the main project and namecoin the sub-project. Also, I don't think it is fair to ask khal to make namecoin the main project on his wiki pages and he has expressed interest in the past to get the namecoin project separated. In this respect, it is somewhat unfortunate that the lead dev for namecoin is also the dot-bit guy.

It's a conundrum. Maybe there is another way ....

[biolizard89]

I agree that multiple wikis (fragmentation) are undesirable and more so because the project is so small at this stage. However, dot-bit will always be a sub-project of Namecoin, just by the construction of the architecture.

It has confused many noobs arriving at dot-bit wiki trying to find out about namecoin. I think it is because the hierachical order of the structure is not clear ... dot-bit seems to be the main project and namecoin the sub-project. Also, I don't think it is fair to ask khal to make namecoin the main project on his wiki pages and he has expressed interest in the past to get the namecoin project separated. In this respect, it is somewhat unfortunate that the lead dev for namecoin is also the dot-bit guy.

It's a conundrum. Maybe there is another way ....

In that case, I guess wait for khal to return, and ask him what he thinks. I was always under the impression that he was the "namecoin guy" primarily, and that he was interested in multiple namespaces including d/... didn't he write the first implementation of the alias namespace? For what it's worth, my opinion is to have Namecoin be the first thing on the wiki index (as it is now), but have a list of projects below it instead of having dot-bit be the only use case on the front page. Dot-bit is certainly still the most popular use case, so it would stay at the top of the list... so I don't see why khal would mind. But I'll wait to hear from khal.

[virtual_master]

I agree that multiple wikis (fragmentation) are undesirable and more so because the project is so small at this stage. However, dot-bit will always be a sub-project of Namecoin, just by the construction of the architecture.

It has confused many noobs arriving at dot-bit wiki trying to find out about namecoin. I think it is because the hierachical order of the structure is not clear ... dot-bit seems to be the main project and namecoin the sub-project. Also, I don't think it is fair to ask khal to make namecoin the main project on his wiki pages and he has expressed interest in the past to get the namecoin project separated. In this respect, it is somewhat unfortunate that the lead dev for namecoin is also the dot-bit guy.

It's a conundrum. Maybe there is another way ....

In that case, I guess wait for khal to return, and ask him what he thinks. I was always under the impression that he was the "namecoin guy" primarily, and that he was interested in multiple namespaces including d/... didn't he write the first implementation of the alias namespace? For what it's worth, my opinion is to have Namecoin be the first thing on the wiki index (as it is now), but have a list of projects below it instead of having dot-bit be the only use case on the front page. Dot-bit is certainly still the most popular use case, so it would stay at the top of the list... so I don't see why khal would mind. But I'll wait to hear from khal.

This is a good aspect to have Namecoin as central point to avoid confusion and dot-bit as main project.
Another good point is to ask Khal also.
It would be also good to have a neutral backup place for all Namecoin projects otherwise if something happens (somebody is falling out or is a bigger server crash) the forum or the wiki is lost. What do you mean ?

[phelix]

The wiki on dot-bit actually is a namecoin wiki (e.g. several namespaces described). Should we give it a more general name? Everybody is welcome to add new stuff btw.

Also I very much like the principle of saving information at one place only.

The idea with the namecoin.info page was to have a general starting point. Admittedly these things tend to sleep away and it is pretty outdated. Should we put the page on github so more people can edit? There certainly are a couple of new projects but are they mature enough to go on namecoin.info? At least all the new projects should go on the wiki.

I have access to namecoin.info. Not sure if we can/should make larger changes to the wiki without an ack from Khal. But he certainly would not mind a "Projects" section.

What making more use of http://reddit.com/r/namecoin ?