Re: Restructuring of the hardware section (i.e. removing duplicate/obsolete stuff)

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 24703 bytes --]

Hello Tom,

I personally would suggest to remove it. I don't find it useful for
anything any more.

Running a very old version of IPFire does not make any sense for anyone.
It is very harmful as there might be many bugs or vulnerabilities. So
this should not be promoted by having old documentation.

Outdated documentation about things that are not directly related to
IPFire (like the Debian installation guides on how to build a Xen
server) should be removed as well.

If anyone is searching for something very particular there is still the
history feature of the wiki where you can go back in time.

-Michael

On Mon, 2015-02-16 at 17:21 -0500, trymes(a)rymes.com wrote:
> One thing that would be helpful is a clear policy on what to do with outdated information. I know that I personally struggled with how to handle old details when the new firewall interface was introduced.
> 
> Tom
> 
> > On Feb 16, 2015, at 2:06 PM, Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Hey Rod,
> > 
> > sorry that I did not reply earlier.
> > 
> >> On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 02:03 -0600, R. W. Rodolico wrote:
> >> Who is actually managing the documentation? I have some articles written
> >> (well, rough drafts). Is there one person who we should be talking to
> >> about this?
> > 
> > Nobody is, essentially. There are many people who write/edit an article
> > every once in a while and there were some people who invested many hours
> > like Erik. But there has never been a manager who has been managing
> > people all the time.
> > 
> >> Also, Michael talked about wanting a replacement for the software on the
> >> documentation site. Does anyone have any ideas? I have a tech who is
> >> also a web content person and I could donate some of her time to
> >> transferring. She has already looked at the site and given a few
> >> recommendations.
> > 
> > Indeed I am not too pleases with Dokuwiki. It is not too bad but I am
> > missing some functionality and a bit of performance. It is way better
> > than all the alternatives that are out there. I just don't find it easy
> > to use and I find the layout of the pages not too beautiful. Those are
> > things that can be changed by using plugins but those are not always
> > that well maintained.
> > 
> >> Work appears to be slowing here a little, so maybe we could put a little
> >> time in.
> > 
> > That is great. We always need native speakers to proof-read some things.
> > The main issue here is though that I need a commitment by more people to
> > actually care about the documentation. Otherwise it won't work. It is
> > not a task for just one or two people. It is something that needs to be
> > done by many and there are many different tasks. Proof-reading texts
> > that have been written by people who only speak English as a second
> > language is just one small part of that. We also need good content.
> > Comprehensive guides, good tutorials, in-depth explanations of things.
> > 
> > -Michael
> > 
> >> Rod
> >> 
> >>> On 02/08/2015 07:05 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>> 
> >>> I am writing this to you just because things need to be said. It might
> >>> be that not everyone who reaches this email is the right person who
> >>> should read this, but nevertheless I am annoyed.
> >>> 
> >>> I am deeply annoyed with the state the wiki is in and I have been
> >>> annoyed for a long long time. There is so much documentation in there
> >>> that is either in a bad state, is completely outdated or is now just
> >>> wrong.
> >>> 
> >>> I often stated that I am willing to tolerate if there is information
> >>> missing in one or the other of all the languages, but when it comes to a
> >>> point where people are more confused by the documentation than it helps
> >>> them... we need to do something.
> >>> 
> >>> Last night, I restructured the entire hardware section. It was really
> >>> bad. Especially information about the various ARM hardware that is
> >>> supported was all over the place. Some pages have been there twice with
> >>> completely different things on them. Some had their own section.
> >>> 
> >>> The result of that is that the landing page of the hardware section
> >>> (http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/start) was stripped to the bare
> >>> essentials in my opinion. What are the requirements? What hardware
> >>> should I use? Examples? Done.
> >>> 
> >>> Some things that have been on the very long page before were just moved
> >>> to a sub-page. I find it very important to explain why certain decisions
> >>> where made and what reasons are behind something. But having all that on
> >>> the first page is not helping. People don't read long texts if they are
> >>> searching for a particular thing. If someone is interested in more
> >>> detail he or she will search for that any way. So the landing page shows
> >>> the recommended hardware specification. All other information about that
> >>> can be found over here: http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/requirements
> >>> 
> >>> Then I created a section which just handles the ARM hardware:
> >>> 
> >>>  http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/arm/start
> >>> 
> >>> As mentioned before, there is no new information. This is just all the
> >>> information collected from the rest of the wiki and restructured. The
> >>> key element here is a table with all the hardware we support (or
> >>> explicitly do not support). I figured that this is the most important
> >>> information that the users are searching for. If you click on one of the
> >>> boards, you will find additional information. Those pages are not the
> >>> best and explain how to install an ARM board over and over again. That
> >>> is good for now, but needs to be cleaned up as well in the near future.
> >>> 
> >>> I am telling you this because I want you (who ever is interested) to
> >>> understand what I have in mind when I write these things. It may not the
> >>> best thing, but I have some points why I am doing it like I do it and
> >>> may be you can adopt some of them, too.
> >>> 
> >>> Clean design and clear structure is hugely important. This wiki holds so
> >>> much information about IPFire that almost every questions can be
> >>> answered. The problem with that is that it is very hard to find at
> >>> times. If you know what you are searching for you will find the right
> >>> page very quickly. If you are searching for something for the first time
> >>> with no background information, you are practically screwed.
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> So to bring this all to a point: I am very much inclined to delete huge
> >>> parts of the documentation.
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> I find it much better to have no information at all instead of providing
> >>> the users with wrong information. Wrong could also mean just outdated or
> >>> obsolete.
> >>> 
> >>> A few examples: We don't need pages which say "English version coming
> >>> soon". This has been there since 2013.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_wheezy_xen_4.1
> >>> 
> >>> We also do not need installation guides for outdated software (here
> >>> Debian). If anybody is going to install a virtualization host, they
> >>> should certainly start with the current stable version. So either this
> >>> needs to be updated or removed.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_xen_4.x
> >>> 
> >>> Why did someone even start writing a separate page for Wheezy (only in
> >>> German) when there was already a page about the same topic with Squeeze?
> >>> I imagine this has happened because the author was unaware of the
> >>> existence of the one page.
> >>> 
> >>> This is just one of the many examples I can bring here and I should
> >>> point out that I am not at all disappointed with the work many people
> >>> have done here. There is only something massively wrong with how it is
> >>> maintained. Outdated information isn't worth a penny.
> >>> 
> >>> There is a third page about the same topic handling Debian Lenny.
> >>> Someone added a notes that this page is outdated. At this point I cannot
> >>> imagine something else but deleting all of this.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/de/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_als_dom0_xen
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> The other topic that is the missing translation is the firewall section.
> >>> Since almost a year now there is a completely rewritten firewall GUI.
> >>> Nothing looks the same any more and some parts have become more
> >>> difficult to use. Hence we wrote a very decent firewall documentation
> >>> which no one ever translated into any other language.
> >>> 
> >>> It has been pointed out several times on the forums and many people made
> >>> promises to actually do something about it. No one ever did. It was not
> >>> even started.
> >>> 
> >>> I cannot help it thinking that there is just no interest in having a
> >>> German translation. Many people argue often that it is important to keep
> >>> documentation accessible in various languages and I completely agree
> >>> with that. But if nobody cares doing the work I can not take you and
> >>> your point serious.
> >>> 
> >>> I am especially picking on the German translation as we have a huge
> >>> community of people who are speaking German. The translations of the
> >>> other languages are not very much advanced so that people don't read
> >>> these at all and even if they do, there is not so much outdated
> >>> information in there (the installation works the same since years for
> >>> instance).
> >>> 
> >>> So in the end there must be consequences. I am not sure about what is
> >>> the right way - quite possibly is there no right way of doing this. But
> >>> seriously guys, we cannot keep doing this in this way we are doing it
> >>> right now. That is dangerous.
> >>> 
> >>> I wonder if someone has something to say about this matter. I would be
> >>> happy to hear from you all. There are over 50 people subscribed to this
> >>> list. So I will take silence as an answer.
> >>> 
> >>> Best,
> >>> -Michael
> >>> 
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Documentation mailing list
> >>> Documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> >>> http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation
> > X-CGP-ClamAV-Result: CLEAN
> > X-VirusScanner: Niversoft's CGPClamav Helper v1.18.5 (ClamAV engine v0.98.5)
> > X-PolluStop-Diagnostic:  (whitelisted by user)
> > X-Orig-Return-Path: documentation-bounces(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > X-Orig-Recipients: s9j0e1+WhT0mpneOkCtD0REdEqU2myLD
> > X-AttachExt: asc
> > X-PolluStop-Score: 0.00
> > X-PolluStop: Scanned with Niversoft PolluStop v2.13.2
> > Return-Path: <documentation-bounces(a)lists.ipfire.org>
> > Received: from mail01.ipfire.org ([178.63.73.247] verified)
> >  by rymes.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.4.11)
> >  with ESMTPS id 9050334 for trymes(a)rymes.com; Mon, 16 Feb 2015 14:06:00 -0500
> > Received: from hedwig.ipfire.org (localhost [IPv6:::1])
> >    by mail01.ipfire.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59EB921C4;
> >    Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:05:43 +0100 (CET)
> > Received: from rice-oxley.tremer.info (rice-oxley.tremer.info
> > [IPv6:2001:470:1f09:1abc:beae:c5ff:fe04:be50])
> > (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits))
> > (No client certificate requested)
> > by mail01.ipfire.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 792C921A2;
> > Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:05:42 +0100 (CET)
> > Message-ID: <1424113537.17826.69.camel(a)ipfire.org>
> > Subject: Re: Restructuring of the hardware section (i.e. removing
> > duplicate/obsolete stuff)
> > From: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
> > To: "R. W. Rodolico" <rodo(a)dailydata.net>
> > Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:05:37 +0100
> > In-Reply-To: <54DC5E6F.9030803(a)dailydata.net>
> > References: <1423400748.2329.43.camel(a)rice-oxley.tremer.info>
> > <54DC5E6F.9030803(a)dailydata.net>
> > Organization: IPFire.org
> > X-Mailer: Evolution 3.12.10 (3.12.10-1.fc21) 
> > Mime-Version: 1.0
> > Cc: documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > X-BeenThere: documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1
> > Precedence: list
> > List-Id: "Discussions about the wiki,
> > translations and stuff..." <documentation.lists.ipfire.org>
> > List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/options/documentation>,
> > <mailto:documentation-request(a)lists.ipfire.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> > List-Archive: <http://lists.ipfire.org/pipermail/documentation/>
> > List-Post: <mailto:documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org>
> > List-Help: <mailto:documentation-request(a)lists.ipfire.org?subject=help>
> > List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation>,
> > <mailto:documentation-request(a)lists.ipfire.org?subject=subscribe>
> > Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6022088350758620877=="
> > Errors-To: documentation-bounces(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > Sender: "Documentation" <documentation-bounces(a)lists.ipfire.org>
> > 
> > 
> > --===============6022088350758620877==
> > Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg="pgp-sha512";
> >    protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-fkvUhoYEfOWxfQq7rOr5"
> > 
> > 
> > --=-fkvUhoYEfOWxfQq7rOr5
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> > 
> > Hey Rod,
> > 
> > sorry that I did not reply earlier.
> > 
> >> On Thu, 2015-02-12 at 02:03 -0600, R. W. Rodolico wrote:
> >> Who is actually managing the documentation? I have some articles written
> >> (well, rough drafts). Is there one person who we should be talking to
> >> about this?
> > 
> > Nobody is, essentially. There are many people who write/edit an article
> > every once in a while and there were some people who invested many hours
> > like Erik. But there has never been a manager who has been managing
> > people all the time.
> > 
> >> Also, Michael talked about wanting a replacement for the software on the
> >> documentation site. Does anyone have any ideas? I have a tech who is
> >> also a web content person and I could donate some of her time to
> >> transferring. She has already looked at the site and given a few
> >> recommendations.
> > 
> > Indeed I am not too pleases with Dokuwiki. It is not too bad but I am
> > missing some functionality and a bit of performance. It is way better
> > than all the alternatives that are out there. I just don't find it easy
> > to use and I find the layout of the pages not too beautiful. Those are
> > things that can be changed by using plugins but those are not always
> > that well maintained.
> > 
> >> Work appears to be slowing here a little, so maybe we could put a little
> >> time in.
> > 
> > That is great. We always need native speakers to proof-read some things.
> > The main issue here is though that I need a commitment by more people to
> > actually care about the documentation. Otherwise it won't work. It is
> > not a task for just one or two people. It is something that needs to be
> > done by many and there are many different tasks. Proof-reading texts
> > that have been written by people who only speak English as a second
> > language is just one small part of that. We also need good content.
> > Comprehensive guides, good tutorials, in-depth explanations of things.
> > 
> > -Michael
> > 
> >> Rod
> >> =20
> >>> On 02/08/2015 07:05 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>> =20
> >>> I am writing this to you just because things need to be said. It might
> >>> be that not everyone who reaches this email is the right person who
> >>> should read this, but nevertheless I am annoyed.
> >>> =20
> >>> I am deeply annoyed with the state the wiki is in and I have been
> >>> annoyed for a long long time. There is so much documentation in there
> >>> that is either in a bad state, is completely outdated or is now just
> >>> wrong.
> >>> =20
> >>> I often stated that I am willing to tolerate if there is information
> >>> missing in one or the other of all the languages, but when it comes to =
> > a
> >>> point where people are more confused by the documentation than it helps
> >>> them... we need to do something.
> >>> =20
> >>> Last night, I restructured the entire hardware section. It was really
> >>> bad. Especially information about the various ARM hardware that is
> >>> supported was all over the place. Some pages have been there twice with
> >>> completely different things on them. Some had their own section.
> >>> =20
> >>> The result of that is that the landing page of the hardware section
> >>> (http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/start) was stripped to the bare
> >>> essentials in my opinion. What are the requirements? What hardware
> >>> should I use? Examples? Done.
> >>> =20
> >>> Some things that have been on the very long page before were just moved
> >>> to a sub-page. I find it very important to explain why certain decision=
> > s
> >>> where made and what reasons are behind something. But having all that o=
> > n
> >>> the first page is not helping. People don't read long texts if they are
> >>> searching for a particular thing. If someone is interested in more
> >>> detail he or she will search for that any way. So the landing page show=
> > s
> >>> the recommended hardware specification. All other information about tha=
> > t
> >>> can be found over here: http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/requirements
> >>> =20
> >>> Then I created a section which just handles the ARM hardware:
> >>> =20
> >>>  http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/hardware/arm/start
> >>> =20
> >>> As mentioned before, there is no new information. This is just all the
> >>> information collected from the rest of the wiki and restructured. The
> >>> key element here is a table with all the hardware we support (or
> >>> explicitly do not support). I figured that this is the most important
> >>> information that the users are searching for. If you click on one of th=
> > e
> >>> boards, you will find additional information. Those pages are not the
> >>> best and explain how to install an ARM board over and over again. That
> >>> is good for now, but needs to be cleaned up as well in the near future.
> >>> =20
> >>> I am telling you this because I want you (who ever is interested) to
> >>> understand what I have in mind when I write these things. It may not th=
> > e
> >>> best thing, but I have some points why I am doing it like I do it and
> >>> may be you can adopt some of them, too.
> >>> =20
> >>> Clean design and clear structure is hugely important. This wiki holds s=
> > o
> >>> much information about IPFire that almost every questions can be
> >>> answered. The problem with that is that it is very hard to find at
> >>> times. If you know what you are searching for you will find the right
> >>> page very quickly. If you are searching for something for the first tim=
> > e
> >>> with no background information, you are practically screwed.
> >>> =20
> >>> =20
> >>> So to bring this all to a point: I am very much inclined to delete huge
> >>> parts of the documentation.
> >>> =20
> >>> =20
> >>> I find it much better to have no information at all instead of providin=
> > g
> >>> the users with wrong information. Wrong could also mean just outdated o=
> > r
> >>> obsolete.
> >>> =20
> >>> A few examples: We don't need pages which say "English version coming
> >>> soon". This has been there since 2013.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_wheezy_xen=
> > _4.1
> >>> =20
> >>> We also do not need installation guides for outdated software (here
> >>> Debian). If anybody is going to install a virtualization host, they
> >>> should certainly start with the current stable version. So either this
> >>> needs to be updated or removed.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_xen_4.x
> >>> =20
> >>> Why did someone even start writing a separate page for Wheezy (only in
> >>> German) when there was already a page about the same topic with Squeeze=
> > ?
> >>> I imagine this has happened because the author was unaware of the
> >>> existence of the one page.
> >>> =20
> >>> This is just one of the many examples I can bring here and I should
> >>> point out that I am not at all disappointed with the work many people
> >>> have done here. There is only something massively wrong with how it is
> >>> maintained. Outdated information isn't worth a penny.
> >>> =20
> >>> There is a third page about the same topic handling Debian Lenny.
> >>> Someone added a notes that this page is outdated. At this point I canno=
> > t
> >>> imagine something else but deleting all of this.
> >>> http://wiki.ipfire.org/de/addons/virtualisation/howto/debian_als_dom0_x=
> > en
> >>> =20
> >>> =20
> >>> The other topic that is the missing translation is the firewall section=
> > .
> >>> Since almost a year now there is a completely rewritten firewall GUI.
> >>> Nothing looks the same any more and some parts have become more
> >>> difficult to use. Hence we wrote a very decent firewall documentation
> >>> which no one ever translated into any other language.
> >>> =20
> >>> It has been pointed out several times on the forums and many people mad=
> > e
> >>> promises to actually do something about it. No one ever did. It was not
> >>> even started.
> >>> =20
> >>> I cannot help it thinking that there is just no interest in having a
> >>> German translation. Many people argue often that it is important to kee=
> > p
> >>> documentation accessible in various languages and I completely agree
> >>> with that. But if nobody cares doing the work I can not take you and
> >>> your point serious.
> >>> =20
> >>> I am especially picking on the German translation as we have a huge
> >>> community of people who are speaking German. The translations of the
> >>> other languages are not very much advanced so that people don't read
> >>> these at all and even if they do, there is not so much outdated
> >>> information in there (the installation works the same since years for
> >>> instance).
> >>> =20
> >>> So in the end there must be consequences. I am not sure about what is
> >>> the right way - quite possibly is there no right way of doing this. But
> >>> seriously guys, we cannot keep doing this in this way we are doing it
> >>> right now. That is dangerous.
> >>> =20
> >>> I wonder if someone has something to say about this matter. I would be
> >>> happy to hear from you all. There are over 50 people subscribed to this
> >>> list. So I will take silence as an answer.
> >>> =20
> >>> Best,
> >>> -Michael
> >>> =20
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Documentation mailing list
> >>> Documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> >>> http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation
> >>> =20
> >> =20
> > 
> > --=-fkvUhoYEfOWxfQq7rOr5
> > Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
> > Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> > 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v2
> > 
> > iQIcBAABCgAGBQJU4j+FAAoJEIB58P9vkAkHTgsP/0ug5sG4f3LWKIUPVeBYvqvv
> > sIV0iwU5An9HM0yDtbXnNCXX0RbAcDgpWwh0GMNN29GevYOavsH67SfSnu7dm74P
> > gUZVlKrSWXXWgg7uUBXJclJFuzAkrAq4JaCgVQUbMpdK8ixnYulp3I7jvKFJ73jv
> > ctpSaALRWFhHtg3ttNvjEdjm0Nc03fxAMNacdhBCvObBh7zQSaEOCParZ1HQF/G6
> > DRs5qLK/E19NyZAn8ZYUiKvbHJ6q/xxLS3gDlHFwAzPPd+ZIBaoZUQx+rZyYSMr4
> > f6sMY8YaoH/1yNVpn7IjINV3Th8I9yXmNqt9t/uKy5u1jCfcBYTylvPX9qLTkCzv
> > QBMcVXJECRaNLZqDrFkqEYlIWwtU4/aq4HDSH/0K93Q7y8vruNTz7HUVEJyJPCV8
> > dWvOMPMQcbpGFPC+M/O+AZToBi8ltnr0dh66eCjMxoPJzn48BNxh9YdG5xpsAB4n
> > ZvmNk/QaBmcjFHCEVCGYQa4KrGwD8PPXVPBhG2DsOnPnGp5m4ZznPFzX7dPzcqYd
> > q8vPj7waHRwT87x+f+K78E9ejBYp1NDn2HFNIPiZ4oKXWMJlyCV1RsJ2qwns7+A+
> > 1w7hv9dWs2hus/rVYPNw5MPzLRXpvaqbqNVHZBZiIbYdTjMSbS0QifM2O/a6sSkz
> > NGZSbcdLQaDerOkUPVNI
> > =rY9z
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > 
> > --=-fkvUhoYEfOWxfQq7rOr5--
> > 
> > 
> > --===============6022088350758620877==
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> > Content-Disposition: inline
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Documentation mailing list
> > Documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation
> > 
> > --===============6022088350758620877==--
> > 

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 819 bytes --]