The FreeBSD Handbook, in Wiki form.

dayton at brooklyn.cuny.edu dayton at brooklyn.cuny.edu
Wed May 4 05:54:53 PDT 2005



    Benjamin Keating wrote:
    > Is there anything being done to help keep the handbook just a little
    > more updated? It's a great handbook, if it's content wasn't so out of
    > date.
    > 
    > A wiki would be a great way to acheive this. If there isn't a project
    > like it yet, I'd like to propose we set one up. I can contribute quite
    > a bit of time and resources towards this. Save me wiki.freebsd.org and
    > I'll get a move on!

    What about http://www.freebsdwiki.net? It needs a better home page and
    some content, but it's there. Besides, I completely agree with you that
    wiki-kind software must replace all pointless hand-editing and mail
    shuffling.

    -- 

    Regards,
    Karel Miklav


I am a long-time FreeBSD user.  I rarely consult the handbook because of the
problems mentioned in this thread.  A Wikipedia approach would be great but
it would require constant attention by a dedicated group of people.

A compromise approach could be to do what www.php.net does.  On this site
they have the official manual, which has the same flaws as the FBSD handbook
(out of date pages, obtuse descriptions, ...).  In addition, postings from
users are attached to each page.  These postings often contain information
more pertinent to a particular query than the manual page itself.

With this scheme, it is easy for a manual user to distinguish the "official"
information from the information from general users.  So one can apply the
appropriate mental filters on the information.

I am sure there is some monitoring and selection of posts by some
responsible people.  But the effort involved should be considerably less
than that required for the Wikipedia model.

dayton



More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list