[MPlayer-DOCS] Re: [MEncoder-users] Mencoder finishes early on DVD to Divx encoding

[Guillaume POIRIER]

Hi Rich,

(I CC the doc ML as that list is more appropriate IMHO)
On 6/22/05, Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
[..]
> > Doing it in a Wiki is fine too. That actually has the advantage that people
> > will probably be good about updating when parameters or functionality
> > changes.
> 
> The idea of wiki was already quickly shot down a long time ago. People
> wanting to contribute should send patches for the official
> documentation.

They should, but they don't! How many people send patches to update
the docs these days? All the fingers of one hand are enough to count
them.

Rich, what we don't realize is that sending a patch to the list is not
_that_ simple to Joe User: - you need to understand Nroff or XML, and
know where the source is located so you may update it (not so
straightforward when you only use binary packages),
- then you need to know how to make a patch... (then you need to
resend it because it's not a unified diff patch),
- then you need to figure out where to send it... do you send it to
Diego, whose is mail address is on the front page, do you sent it to
the ML?
- then you need to subscribe to the list, and send the patch (and
resend a another mail because you forgot to attach the file)...

At the end of this process, how many people are left?


Ok now, just consider what you have to do to contribute to a wiki:
- create an account
- log in
- start to contribute on the page you just read one minute before !


I'm really not a Wiki zealot, but I don't like the idea of having few
people of the MPlayer crew do the job that lots of uses would be
thrilled to do if we were to put ourselves in their shoes and
understand what stops them from contributing.


That's pretty sure that having more random people contributing to the
docs will make it less consistent, but is that really a terrible thing
that will prevent us from sleeping well?

Just look at how good the wikipedia is! We even give links to the
wikipedia in our docs! How dare do we flame wikis when we use them
already!!

And the wikipedia is not the only project that benefits from wikis,
there's also ubuntu, fedora, GCC, wikiquotes, and probably many
others.


I'd be happy if we could debate that issue without getting into flames
(thought I know it's not the first time we discuss wikis).


Regards,
Guillaume
-- 
A woman isn't complete without a man.
But where do you find a man - a real man - these
days?
  -- Lauren Bacall
My answer: Only at #mplayerdev on the freenode IRC network.