New maintainer forum and wiki

[Bill Moran]

In response to Beech Rintoul <beech at freebsd.org>:

> I am happy to announce the opening of a new forum and wiki aimed 
> primarily at the maintainer community. This site is open to all 
> maintainers and committers. There isn't much there yet, but I'm 
> hoping that you will find this useful and help contribute to the 
> effort. If you want to be part of this, just register at the forum 
> and I'll add you to the wiki. 
> 
> You can find it at:
> 
> http://freebsd.alaskaparadise.com
> 
> Feel free to contact me and let me know what you would like to see.

At the risk of sounding like a whiner ...

First off, what purpose does having yet another forum serve but to
fragment discussion?  Personally, I don't want to have yet another
place to watch for information, and I find the mailing lists quite
workable.

Secondly, one of the things that I've always enjoyed and bragged about
with FreeBSD is the high-quality documentation.  I'm really not a big
fan of 8-jillion HOWTOs spread all over the internet and all having
different levels of quality, reliability, and upkeep.  It seems to me
that wikis feed this "low-quality howto overload".

Thirdly, I already have my own site with notes and other stuff about
what I do (I maintain a small handful of ports).  I'm already forced
to maintain two (one for work, and one for personal) and I have
absolutely no desire to maintain a third, let alone any time.

All that being said, I say go for it.
* As long as the forum is searchable without an account, the information
  there will be generally useful (unlike that obnoxious experts exchange
  site -- I hate those people!)
* As long as _important_ discussions occur on the @freebsd.org lists,
  it won't cause any (or much) fragmentation
* As long as important information on the wiki is cleaned up and
  committed to the official FreeBSD docs, it won't result in
  unmaintained garbage.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com