4 ms·
Wikis take a lot of maintenance by a determined core of contributors, or else the pages deteriorate into a pile of incoherent edits. Occasionally I see this eve
by massysett 4y ago
Wikis take a lot of maintenance by a determined core of contributors, or else the pages deteriorate into a pile of incoherent edits. Occasionally I see this even on the Arch wiki. Main text says “do this.” That’s followed by some text saying “I tried this and it didn’t work.” That’s followed by a text box saying “that method is deprecated.”
- amadeuspagel 4y agoBut that's still better then just having the main text saying "do this" where "this" is wrong. And that's often the case for non-wiki documentation.
- massysett 4y agoTrue, but where docs have a dedicated, core maintenance crew, they can maintain the docs in a good state with less effort. With a wiki, the problem is that drive-by editors can degrade a good product, requiring constant work by the core contributors to revert bad edits. My main point was as a response to the original question, which was: why aren’t more docs in wiki form? I think one reason for that is that good docs require dedicated contributors, and I think a wiki does little to nothing to reduce their burden. The myth of the wiki is that by erecting it, drive-by contributors will build a great product. I don’t think any quality wiki was built that way.