[Wine] The pros and cons of a wiki AppDB

[Ben Klein]

2009/3/8 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> 2009/3/7 Rosanne DiMesio <dimesio at earthlink.net>:
>
>> I can think of one possible benefit. There are a lot of apps without maintainers, and there might be users of those apps who would be willing take a few minutes to post bits of useful information in a wiki, but don't want the responsibility of being a maintainer. Sure, they could just post info in a comment, but user comments are buried at the bottom of the page and not in a useful order for finding information quickly. The same goes for comments in test reports--I've found information on needed tweaks buried several reports down from the most recent.
>
>
> Yep. That's why a wiki is nice. If you open it up to everyone to
> contribute, you'll get bad stuff but you'll get good stuff you just
> wouldn't get otherwise. It's a great format to capture that.
>
> Being an app maintainer is too much like bureaucracy. It makes
> drive-by reports way too hard. Keep it simple, you'll get more
> information and therefore more good information.
>
> (Disclaimer: I'm a Wikipedia admin and press volunteer, so I think of
> wikis as good default solutions for lots of things ;-)
>
> What do users want from the AppDB? They want to know how well the app
> works with Wine, and what tweaks are needed to get it working.
>
> I'd be tempted to just go and start a wiki on the subject myself, but
> it'd be duplicated effort with the present AppDB. So I'd rather try to
> make a case for it.
>
> The present AppDB is lacking in many ways that I think a wiki would help with.

Lacking, yes. Wiki? I really don't think that's a viable solution. We
already have one wiki, wiki.winehq.org. Setting up an AppDB wiki in
addition would likely get very messy. AppDB is more like a tightly
controlled forum. The problem is that, as you say, it's not easy to
get tweaks listed on app pages, and users could very well be
intimidated by the (super)maintainer processes.

The current view is that HOWTOs in particular are best written by app
maintainers - they're the ones who should know all the details and
caveats. The issue here is that there aren't enough people
volunteering for (super)maintainer rights on the right applications
(how many maintainers do we really need for Counterstrike:Source?), or
they are not active enough to write and maintain HOWTOs, Warnings and
Notes.

Maybe we could make it easier for casual users to write Notes? HOWTOs
should probably still be reserved for (super)maintainers, or at least
require (super)maintainer approval before being accepted. "Why?" I
hear you ask. Because I'm worried that if we open it up completely
we'll get people providing instructions that destroy systems or
install malware. Wikis are great for encyclopaedic references, but not
so great for instructions and guides.

> I'm cc'ing this to wine-users - since I'd need to make a case for the
> wiki to developers, but it's actually *for* the users. Users: what's
> right and wrong with the AppDB? How useful is it for you? What would
> make it better?

I'm not subscribed to wine-users, so I won't see comments there.