How, precisely, can we improve?

Tue Sep 27 16:06:26 UTC 2016

Yes, I agree with Michael’s observations in the blog post. However, one thing that’s easier about a wiki is that the editing process is much more lightweight than making a PR.

But GitHub has a wonderful feature (that I have rarely used) that mitigates this problem. Viewing a file in GitHub offers a little pencil icon in the top-right. It allows you to make arbitrary changes in the file and then automates the construction of a PR. The owner of the file can then accept the PR very, very easily. If the editor has commit rights, you can make your edits into a commit right away. No need to fork, pull and push.

Is this perhaps an easy improvement we can enact?

Note that we’re already moving in this direction with ghc-proposals, which subsumes a large part of what the GHC dev wiki has been used for.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Richard A. Eisenberg
Asst. Prof. of Computer Science
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, PA, USA
cs.brynmawr.edu/~rae

> On Sep 27, 2016, at 11:32 AM, Eric Seidel <eric at seidel.io> wrote:
> 
> 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.
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ghc-devs mailing list
>>> ghc-devs at haskell.org
>>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
>>> 
>>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> ghc-devs mailing list
>> ghc-devs at haskell.org
>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
> _______________________________________________
> ghc-devs mailing list
> ghc-devs at haskell.org
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs