Are we ready for a wiki.drupal.org?

...now we need the action. What's the plan? Who is going to maintain it? What's the timeline? Have you talked to the documentation mailing list? How does this fit into a d.o. redesign?

I would suggest making a plan and signing up some co-conspirators to move this forward.

The pieces are all in place -- and with the Talk module now on d.o (thanks, cwgordon!), I think we're at a good place to lead with the screencast shpwing how to set it up.

IMO, immediately jumping into converting the docs to full wiki format is premature, as these changes would require some significant shift in how d.o is configured. Also, given that d.o needs to get upgraded to 6 before D6 can be released, and that wikifying d.o would add some overhead to the modules needed to be upgraded prior to a D6 release, the timing isn't right, even if there was enough community interest to make this conversion happen -- and that is a BIG if.

A tutorial screencast, however, would get things rolling nicely, as it could be used as a recipe/documentation showing how to access this functionality within Drupal.

So, how about this:
Drupal core
wikitools
related links
talk
checkout

then the filters -- freelinking? camelcase? drutex? pearwiki? -- what ones, and in what combination?

What other modules should be included here?

@cwgordon: if you are interested in doing the screencast, let me know in this thread. I'd be glad to write this us as a GHOP task.

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

It seems like the general consensus is that this is a good idea. Now, of course, we have to figure out how we're going to actually accomplish this:

When:

Certainly, after drupal.org itself has been upgraded to d6. Once that's done, we, the community, should make it a priority to port the modules we need. Which, of course brings up the question...

How:

Theme:
Bluebeach, of course. Shouldn't be a problem for Drupal 6, considering drupal.org needs it ported, too.

Modules:
Drupal core (well... of course)
Wikitools (Most mature yet lightweight wiki functionality)
Pearwiki Filter (Hard to set up, but worthwhile)
Talk (Just neat)
Diff (Nice to have, and g.d.o. uses it too, so shouldn't be any harder)
???? (Not sure how to do this, but a nice mediawiki-style "toolbox" would be useful. Perhaps done as a custom block, only displaying on node/* pages. Should be a list of things we can actually do, such as "permanent link" (in the form of node/nid/revisions/vid/view .)
Table of contents (easier organization of long articles).
Backlinks (Just plain awesome)

Feasibility:
Core... easy.
Wikitools... shouldn't be too hard to port.
Pearwiki Filter... any volunteers?
Talk... again, not too hard.
Diff... g.d.o. needs it anyway
Table of contents... not very good in its current state, but a quick cleanup should do for the 5.x version, and then porting to 6.x should be a breeze (virtually no changes in the filtering system.
Backlinks... once views is ported, should be very little of a problem.

Volunteers:

If you would like to volunteer to help maintain, please comment.

I volunteer to help maintain this new site.

Independent of or dependent on handbooks?

Interesting question. Here's what I would say:

Since this is sort of an experiment, let's do this:
Export the handbook nodes on drupal.org.
Import them on the new site.
Open up the wiki.
See what happens, and then decide whether to use the handbooks or the wikiized version of them.

Any other opinions would be great :)

-cwgordon7

@billfitzgerald: I've already posted a how-to at http://cwgordon.com/how-to-create-a-wiki-with-drupal, if you're interested. Anyone who wants to can feel free to turn this into a screencast :). And no, I myself am not interested in doing screencasts (sorry).

Yes. I believe it is a wonderful idea. It is kind of amazing that there is not one already. If drupal.org does not even provide a wiki to it's community, how can we expect anyone to implement a drupal wiki, over a mediawiki wiki?

I think it will have a side benefit in that it will make better better drupal documentation. All of the drupal documentation seems to be written to the same mental/expertise level. you don't see, basic summarys of overview of the drupal functions or procedures. I think this is because it is pretty much written by the hard core gods as a after thought, or while they are ramping up for their next god like coding action.

By allowing the community to wikify, you will get a broad array of people writing about drupal. Different people will write in a style that connections with some, and others will write in a style that connects with others. It will make drupal documentation MUCH greater.

Start wiki.drupal.org yesterday! Make sure you send us a blast email.

Cheers!

Larry Garfield (aka Crell) just wrote a huge post on this subject at http://www.garfieldtech.com/drupal-org-wiki

What is taking so long in setting up a wiki.drupal.org? Is it going to be wiki.drupal.org? Can anyone inform us as to what is happening? It took me a day to set my drupal wiki up. Why is it taking so long for the Geniuses to get one up? I don't think it looks good to anyone thinking of setting up a drupal wiki to see that the people that make the product them selves have been talking about it for over three months, and don't seem to be able to start one. What is the news/status?

We need to be able to develop documentation as quickly as the developers develop code. By lowering the barriers to entry for starting documentation that others can contribute to, the wiki process will lead us one step closer to achieving that. By taking advantage of people's fragmented attention spans, we could get contributions from people in smaller bites and still conserve that effort in the various revisions that evolve. I actually spoke with Dries about the need for more documentation during Drupalcon. I was with a client who wants to contribute to the Drupal community. We were asking Dries which he thought was more needed, more code or more documentation. At the mention of documentation, Dries just lit up.

The process we have isn't working and we need to try others.

I've read Larry's post, and I disagree with him completely. The current process for developing documentation is too slow. We need to add the process to be able to crank out documentation more quickly. Having a wiki is one way to do it. It's also a great way that someone with fewer Drupal skills could make a real and valuable contribution while learning more about Drupal.

Right now one of the avenues for material appearing in the handbook pages is from posts in the forum - an exceptionally good post or discussion gets migrated into the handbook. There's no reason that a wiki couldn't also act as a source for curated handbook pages once they achieve a state of documentation grace. Because of the closed curation of the documentation team, and there's nothing against it, I believe a lot of material doesn't get published because it takes too much work for one person. But a bunch of people each contributing 15 minutes is definitely doable. I've been known to take five or ten minutes and just fix spelling errors on Wikipedia.

Currently, it goes like this:
Drupalero 1: Hey, that's a great idea! You should contribute a handbook page!
Drupalero 2: Yeah sure, when I have a spare 3 hours to write it all out, submit it, then take another hour to fix it the way they want it. Sure, when I have a spare afternoon. (When that spare afternoon comes, just how likely is it that doing documentation is on the top of his priorities?)
Handbook page never gets written.

With a wiki, it could go like this:
Drupalero 1: Hey, that's a great idea! Why don't you throw that up on the wiki.
Drupalero 2: Copies and pastes rough idea onto a wiki page.
Drupalero 3: Visits the wiki page, notices a syntax error and fixes it - adds a comment to the code.
Drupalero 4: Visits the wiki page, writes a paragraph of explanation.
Drupalero 5: Visits the page looking for answers, posts a question.
Drupalero 2: Visits the wiki page, answers the visitor's question, finishes up the wiki page to something that's close to final.
Drupalero 6: Is on the documentation team, adds the finishing touches, flags it as a handbook page and imports it - all authors get credit.
Handbook page gets written.

Good programmers aren't necessarily good documenters. But others who are can edit their material and evolve it into something more professional than what the first iteration would be. This process is currently lacking in the documentation and I believe it would speed things up drastically. The way the current system is, the documentation team just cannot keep up with the developers because one person must perfect a single post first. By creating another source - one that develops a process on its own - we'll have more documentation instead of less. That in itself is worth it.

A wiki could act as a staging ground for good info. Someone could post without meeting the perceived stringent requirements of the documentation team. Someone else could polish it up and eventually, with collaborative effort, it could supply material to the handbook. People would know that it can be edited by anyone. If people understand that it isn't as tightly curated as the handbook, I think it could be a valuable resource on its own. I agree that API.drupal.org leads to a lot of dead ends and head scratching. If the wiki can save someone's blood pressure or save someone from swearing by providing other ideas or approaches when someone hits a dead end (like with the API), it will be justified.

Hello people. Please take a look here: http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-redesign-analysis

specifically these two posts: http://groups.drupal.org/node/10223, and http://groups.drupal.org/node/10003