How, precisely, can we improve?

Tue Sep 27 15:32:36 UTC 2016

Thanks for the link Alan.

I can personally attest to being intimidated by GHC's wiki when I
started contributing. I think having a review mechanism in place would
have helped, because then you at least know that one or two other people
think your content is clear.

On a more minor note, I know the trac wiki has a history feature, but
for some reason I find it much less useful than a git history. Perhaps
this is just an issue of familiarity.

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016, at 07:54, Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote:
> I think this is relevant to the dicussion:
> http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2015/08/thoughts-on-documentation
> 
> Alan
> 
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs <
> ghc-devs at haskell.org> wrote:
> 
> > We currently have *3* wikis:
> >
> >
> >
> >         https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0>
> >
> >         https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc
> >
> >         https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/
> >
> >
> >
> > I didn’t even know about  the third of these, but the first two have
> > clearly differentiated goals:
> >
> > ·        https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0>
> > is about user-facing, and often user-generated, documentation.  Guidance
> > about improving performance, programming idioms, tutorials etc.
> >
> > ·        https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc is about GHC’s implementation,
> > oriented to people who want to understand how GHC works, and how to modify
> > it.
> >
> >
> >
> > I think this separation is actually quite helpful.
> >
> >
> >
> > I agree with what you and others say about the difficulty of keeping wikis
> > organised. But that’s not primarily a technology issue: there is a
> > genuinely difficult challenge here.  How do you build and maintain
> > up-to-date, navigable, well-organised information about a large, complex,
> > and rapidly changing artefact like GHC?  A wiki is one approach that has
> > the merit that anyone can improve it; control is not centralised.  But I’d
> > love there to be other, better solutions.
> >
> >
> >
> > Simon
> >
> >
> >
> > *From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Sven
> > Panne
> > *Sent:* 27 September 2016 08:46
> > *To:* ghc-devs <ghc-devs at haskell.org>
> > *Subject:* Re: How, precisely, can we improve?
> >
> >
> >
> > Just a remark from my side: The documentation/tooling landscape is a bit
> > more fragmented than it needs to be IMHO. More concretely:
> >
> >
> >
> >    * We currently have *3* wikis:
> >
> >
> >
> >         https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.haskell.org%2FHaskell&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=fxYacdt9XklXJaGetQABBI%2BG3IgnlJmB2r1EL54I1HU%3D&reserved=0>
> >
> >         https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc
> >
> >         https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >      It's clear to me that they have different emphases and different
> > origins, but in the end this results in valuable information being
> > scattered around. Wikis in general are already quite hard to navigate (due
> > to their inherent chaotic "structure"), so having 3 of them makes things
> > even worse. It would be great to have *the* single Haskell Wiki directly on
> > haskell.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0>
> > in an easily reachable place.
> >
> >
> >
> >    * To be an active Haskell community member, you need quite a few
> > different logins: Some for the Wikis mentioned above, one for Hackage,
> > another one for Phabricator, perhaps an SSH key here and there...
> > Phabricator is a notable exception: It accepts your GitHub/Google+/...
> > logins. It would be great if the other parts of the Haskell ecosystem
> > accepted those kinds of logins, too.
> >
> >
> >
> >    * https://haskell-lang.org/
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org%2F&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=9ndNQVeDQy7lPb4qmn13k%2BAtztK8F9Hq%2B2jeXKm9YFU%3D&reserved=0>
> > has great stuff on it, but its relationship to haskell.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0>
> > is unclear to me. Their "documentation" sub-pages look extremely similar,
> > but haskell-lang.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=G9e%2BVDuPTtZHZl%2BGd2fFShUznQjDa158JENjoMiD0VY%3D&reserved=0>
> > has various (great!) tutorials and a nice overview of common libraries on
> > it. From an external POV it seems to me that haskell-lang.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell-lang.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=G9e%2BVDuPTtZHZl%2BGd2fFShUznQjDa158JENjoMiD0VY%3D&reserved=0>
> > should be seamlessly integrated into haskell.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0>,
> > i.e. merged into it. Having an endless sea of links on haskell.org
> > <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhaskell.org&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C28109c89abb14244f87908d3e6aa6198%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=%2F8JlCXTwn%2FB8EyrW4BkY0QTS57X%2BFvs4BSXijqCbiNA%3D&reserved=0>
> > is not the same as having content nicely integrated into it, sorted by
> > topic, etc.
> >
> >
> >
> > All those points are not show-stoppers for people trying to be more active
> > in the Haskell community, but nevertheless they make things harder than
> > they need to be, so I fear we lose people quite early. To draw an analogy:
> > As probably everybody who actively monitors their web shop/customer site
> > knows, even seemlingy small things moves customers totally away from your
> > site. One unclear payment form? The vast majority of your potential
> > customers aborts the purchase immediately and forever. One confusing
> > interstitial web page? Say goodbye to lots of people. One hard-to-find
> > button/link? A forced login/new account? => Commercial disaster, etc. etc.
> >
> >
> >
> > Furthermore, I'm quite aware of the technical/social difficulties of my
> > proposals, but that shouldn't let us stop trying to improve...
> >
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >    S.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > ghc-devs at haskell.org
> > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
> >
> >
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