New Mercurial Website

[David Soria Parra-3]

Hi ML,

you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete
new website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks
to Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.

The main repository of the website can be found at:
 
 http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website

The content subrepo at:
 
 http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-content

And the rendered pages at:

 http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-rendered

If you notice any problems with the new site, let us know and open a
ticket.

It would be great if someone helps out with the page by writting
additional content and/or make sure that the content is up to date. If
you are an english native speaker, you can help us by checking grammar
and spelling. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want
to send me a pull request. Patches are always welcome.

Thanks for everybody involved in the project, and Matt for hosting.

David

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[dilipm]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 12:12 AM, David Soria Parra <sn_@...> wrote:

> Hi ML,
>
> you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete new
> website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks to
> Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.
>
> The main repository of the website can be found at:
>
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website
>
> The content subrepo at:
>
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-content
>
> And the rendered pages at:
>
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-rendered
>
> If you notice any problems with the new site, let us know and open a ticket.
>
> It would be great if someone helps out with the page by writting additional
> content and/or make sure that the content is up to date. If you are an
> english native speaker, you can help us by checking grammar and spelling.
> Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want to send me a pull
> request. Patches are always welcome.
>
> Thanks for everybody involved in the project, and Matt for hosting.

Yes...very much!.."Work easier; work faster" is a meaningful description...:)


--
Dilip

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[Hans Meine-4]

On Sunday 01 November 2009 19:42:43 David Soria Parra wrote:
> you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete
> new website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks
> to Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.

Please use em-units for the static width.  With my font size, the layout is
broken in too many places to list (truncated <pre>-text, wrapped/spilling
download box, ...), see
 http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/new_mercurial-site.png

Also, please set a white background; the logo looks strange with its non-
transparent bg on my bg color.

HTH,
  Hans
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 01.11.2009 19:42, David Soria Parra wrote:

> Hi ML,
>
> you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete
> new website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks
> to Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.
>
> The main repository of the website can be found at:
>  
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website
>
> The content subrepo at:
>  
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-content
>
> And the rendered pages at:
>
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-rendered
>
> If you notice any problems with the new site, let us know and open a
> ticket.
>
> It would be great if someone helps out with the page by writting
> additional content and/or make sure that the content is up to date. If
> you are an english native speaker, you can help us by checking grammar
> and spelling. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want
> to send me a pull request. Patches are always welcome.
>
> Thanks for everybody involved in the project, and Matt for hosting.
>

Instead of starting a fork of the wiki which is a huge pain to
edit, it would make a whole lot more sense to improve the
wiki, so people can actually contribute in a useful manner
and adapt content.

I quickly lost interest in sending patches for this new site.

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[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:39, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
> Instead of starting a fork of the wiki which is a huge pain to
> edit, it would make a whole lot more sense to improve the
> wiki, so people can actually contribute in a useful manner
> and adapt content.

You're missing the point.

First-time users, or casually interested visitors, don't need the
depth and breadth of the wiki, and are much better served by a
smaller, more focused site, that can point them to the wiki as
appropriate. See it as a learning curve thing.

IMO the wiki (as most wikis, I think) comes with a lot of chrome and
noise per page, which makes it harder to navigate for these types of
users (but a wonderful resource for people who want more in-depth
information). This just makes the site and the wiki very
complementary. If you're arguing the site should link to the wiki more
conspicuously or in more places, that might make sense, but I do think
the addition of the site is a very good thing.

Cheers,

Dirkjan
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 02.11.2009 12:18, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:39, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>> Instead of starting a fork of the wiki which is a huge pain to
>> edit, it would make a whole lot more sense to improve the
>> wiki, so people can actually contribute in a useful manner
>> and adapt content.
>
> You're missing the point.

No. You are missing the point that such pages you describe below
could be easily added to the current wiki.

There is no need to start an entirely different platform
that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
one will update it.

> First-time users, or casually interested visitors, don't need the
> depth and breadth of the wiki, and are much better served by a
> smaller, more focused site, that can point them to the wiki as
> appropriate. See it as a learning curve thing.

If anything, such a duplicate site structure under the same
domain (selenic.com) with different look and feel just confuses,
especially newbies.

> IMO the wiki (as most wikis, I think) comes with a lot of chrome and
> noise per page, which makes it harder to navigate for these types of
> users (but a wonderful resource for people who want more in-depth
> information). This just makes the site and the wiki very
> complementary. If you're arguing the site should link to the wiki more
> conspicuously or in more places, that might make sense, but I do think
> the addition of the site is a very good thing.

No. I'm arguing that this duplicated site is a step in
the wrong direction.

I wonder what's so hard to navigate in the current wiki.

You even have a perfect search function that can search
titles and full text and there's also the category feature.

Probably the most sexy feature of the new site is it's look
and feel. But for me, content is king.

The time would be better spent in giving the current wiki a
better look and feel and add any missing pages there.
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[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
> one will update it.

Not having everyone update it also means coherent language, structure,
content and more quality control.

And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on our
wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
date.

Cheers,

Dirkjan
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[Kurt Granroth-3]

On 11/1/09 11:42 AM, David Soria Parra wrote:
> you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete
> new website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks
> to Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.
[snip]
> It would be great if someone helps out with the page by writting
> additional content and/or make sure that the content is up to date. If
> you are an english native speaker, you can help us by checking grammar
> and spelling. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want
> to send me a pull request. Patches are always welcome.

Very nice!  It is visually pleasing; well organized; and has just the
right amount of information for a front page.

There is one minor curiosity on my part, though.  In the "Quick Start"
side-bar, the very first (and thus, most common) workflow ends with an
'hg export'.  Why is that?  Is 'export' really the most common way of
sharing patches?

I ask only because in all of my Mercurial usage, I've only ever had to
use 'hg export' *once*.  In day-to-day usage, it's always push/pull.  Is
that an anomaly?
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>> one will update it.
>
> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language, structure,
> content and more quality control.

Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and structure?

Where exactly?

You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.

> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on our
> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
> date.

Not at all.
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[Steve Losh]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:

> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>> wrote:
>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>> one will update it.
>>
>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,  
>> structure,
>> content and more quality control.
>
> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and structure?
>
> Where exactly?
>

Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The  
table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there  
not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there, they're  
just not marked as headings for some reason.

I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and  
not a phone, if you like.

> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>
>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on  
>> our
>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
>> date.
>
> Not at all.
Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the version  
listed on the MercurialAPI page.

Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been  
updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version  
1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely *wrong*  
-- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial it  
says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.

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[Peter Hosey]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 05:31:02, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> I ask only because in all of my Mercurial usage, I've only ever had  
> to use 'hg export' *once*.  In day-to-day usage, it's always push/
> pull.  Is that an anomaly?

I have no idea, but I can say that if a user doesn't want to or can't  
host a clone of your repository on their server, and doesn't want to  
set up a Bitbucket account (or doesn't have enough space left on it),  
pulling from them is not much of an option. The only way it could work  
is if they hg served and you pulled from their machine (probably by  
its IP address), but that will fail for many people because of NATs  
and other network defenses.

Furthermore, pulling only gets the changes into a single repository; a  
patch or changeset bundle can be sent to many people at once, and  
reviewed by some or all of them in parallel. The user could also  
attach it to a bug ticket, or post it on a dedicated review system  
such as Review Board or the one on Google Code Hosting.

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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>
>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>>> wrote:
>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>> one will update it.
>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,  
>>> structure,
>>> content and more quality control.
>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and structure?
>>
>> Where exactly?
>>
> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The  
> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there  
> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there, they're  
> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>
> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and  
> not a phone, if you like.
>
>> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>>
>>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on  
>>> our
>>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
>>> date.
>> Not at all.
> Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the version  
> listed on the MercurialAPI page.
>
> Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been  
> updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version  
> 1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely *wrong*  
> -- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial it  
> says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.
>

And you think that can be improved by starting a second site,
which is not part of the wiki, so that everyone wanting to
update things has to send patches?
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>
>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>>> wrote:
>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>> one will update it.
>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,  
>>> structure,
>>> content and more quality control.
>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and structure?
>>
>> Where exactly?
>>
> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The  
> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there  
> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there, they're  
> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>
> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and  
> not a phone, if you like.
>

So why don't you start fixing it please?
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[rpelisse]

Well, I must admit that I like the new page and find it a better "first impression" of Mercurial than the wiki. To add my 2 cents, to this discussion "yes you can do a very decent website with a wiki", but having a set of well designed static pages to handle the "front page" of the website seems reasonable to me (and far from being as much duplication as Adrian seems to suggest it. Also, I tend to think that "over configuration" the wiki so that it present a nice front page, it's probably not a good idea...

The web page content is not going to change everyday, therefore, I'm not hurt that it should be handle outside the "wiki flow" and that it may or not requires patches if modification comes from the community. Come on, we are all familiar with Mercurial here, but not all of us are "at ease" with Wiki. Other thing that I appreciate, one can modify offline the front page and easily clone a local version of the website (I don't think this is possible with the current wiki, but I maybe wrong).

.... well, that's my 2 cents. 

(Also I wanted to say to the people that work on that site, that some of us actually appreciate your work).

2009/11/2 Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>

On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>
>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>
>>> wrote:
>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>> one will update it.
>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,
>>> structure,
>>> content and more quality control.
>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and structure?
>>
>> Where exactly?
>>
> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The
> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there
> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there, they're
> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>
> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and
> not a phone, if you like.
>

So why don't you start fixing it please?

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--
Romain PELISSE,
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it" -- Terry Pratchett
http://belaran.eu/

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[Benoit Boissinot]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 01:31:36PM +0100, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> On 02.11.2009 12:18, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:39, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
> >> Instead of starting a fork of the wiki which is a huge pain to
> >> edit, it would make a whole lot more sense to improve the
> >> wiki, so people can actually contribute in a useful manner
> >> and adapt content.
> >
> > You're missing the point.

First let me say that I think (and probably everybody else) that your
contributions on the wiki are extremely helpful. Thank you!

>
> No. You are missing the point that such pages you describe below
> could be easily added to the current wiki.
>
> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
> one will update it.

I don't think it's rotten from the start, there are good reasons to have
a static landing page with a nicer design.

As for updating, it's really easy to fork (I just did it to correct the
urls), and I'm sure David would be happy to add more writers to the
bitbucket repo.

We could of course try to have a nicer theming for moinmoin, but I'm
pretty sure it won't be as nice as the static page.
(I'd be happy to try to give a hand if someone wants to add theming).

In my opinion, the main source of informations is still the wiki and it
is complementary of the landing page, so could we just improve both?

Cheers,

Benoit

--
:wq
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

Please keep discussion on-list, so I'm cc-ing the list again

On 02.11.2009 15:52, Steve Losh wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
>
>> On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:
>>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>>>> one will update it.
>>>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,
>>>>> structure,
>>>>> content and more quality control.
>>>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and  
>>>> structure?
>>>>
>>>> Where exactly?
>>>>
>>> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The
>>> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there
>>> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there,  
>>> they're
>>> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>>>
>>> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer and
>>> not a phone, if you like.
>>>
>>>> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>>>>
>>>>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's on
>>>>> our
>>>>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything up to
>>>>> date.
>>>> Not at all.
>>> Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the version
>>> listed on the MercurialAPI page.
>>>
>>> Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been
>>> updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version
>>> 1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely *wrong*
>>> -- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial it  
>>> says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.
>>>
>> And you think that can be improved by starting a second site,
>> which is not part of the wiki, so that everyone wanting to
>> update things has to send patches?
>
> For the "incoherent structure" part of things: absolutely. If a small  
> group is reviewing and/or making changes there's less of a chance that  
> subheadings will be added for some sections and not for others (for  
> example). The site will feel more cohesive which is a good thing to  
> present to first-time users.
>
> Git and Bazaar both have good-looking frontend sites with separate  
> wikis, so the concept is certainly not something new and can  
> definitely work.
>
> For the out-of-date part, I'm not sure. I think the smaller size of  
> the frontend site, and the fact that there are actually people  
> responsible for it (as opposed to the wiki where it's easier to say  
> "eh, someone else can update this") will help in that respect.
>

So you want to have the page MercurialAPI in a static page instead
of in the wiki?

I don't think that's exactly a good idea.

In any case, I'm surprised about what people think about the wiki.

It seems like updating the wiki is no longer appreciated. If that's
the case, then I certainly won't waste my time there any more if the
wiki is in such a lousy state that the project needs to instate
another crew that ignores patches.

And I certainly won't start to send patches for html pages that
are reviewed by a single person simply to learn that they are
rejected after 48 hours. No thanks.

It's funny that much bigger projects manage to have their front
pages as a wiki page. Have a look at Wikipedia.


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[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 16:22, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...> wrote:
> It seems like updating the wiki is no longer appreciated. If that's
> the case, then I certainly won't waste my time there any more if the
> wiki is in such a lousy state that the project needs to instate
> another crew that ignores patches.

The wiki is appreciated a lot! It's the prime site for almost all of
the information about the Mercurial project. There's just a very small
part of it that people are trying to make easier to navigate by
putting it in a small separate site.

> And I certainly won't start to send patches for html pages that
> are reviewed by a single person simply to learn that they are
> rejected after 48 hours. No thanks.

That's unfortunate, but I don't think it has a lot to do with the
larger issues here. I certainly think we have enough bandwidth
available to keep up maintenance of the new site *and* the wiki. What
were your patches for, and why did they get rejected?

Cheers,

Dirkjan
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[Steve Losh]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
wrote:

> Please keep discussion on-list, so I'm cc-ing the list again
>
Ugh, I always forget to hit Reply All on my phone, sorry.

> On 02.11.2009 15:52, Steve Losh wrote:
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:
>>>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>>>>> one will update it.
>>>>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,
>>>>>> structure,
>>>>>> content and more quality control.
>>>>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and
>>>>> structure?
>>>>>
>>>>> Where exactly?
>>>>>
>>>> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The
>>>> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there
>>>> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there,
>>>> they're
>>>> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>>>>
>>>> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer  
>>>> and
>>>> not a phone, if you like.
>>>>
>>>>> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>>>>>
>>>>>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's  
>>>>>> on
>>>>>> our
>>>>>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything  
>>>>>> up to
>>>>>> date.
>>>>> Not at all.
>>>> Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the  
>>>> version
>>>> listed on the MercurialAPI page.
>>>>
>>>> Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been
>>>> updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version
>>>> 1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely  
>>>> *wrong*
>>>> -- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial  
>>>> it  
>>>> says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.
>>>>
>>> And you think that can be improved by starting a second site,
>>> which is not part of the wiki, so that everyone wanting to
>>> update things has to send patches?
>>
>> For the "incoherent structure" part of things: absolutely. If a small
>> group is reviewing and/or making changes there's less of a chance  
>> that
>> subheadings will be added for some sections and not for others (for
>> example). The site will feel more cohesive which is a good thing to
>> present to first-time users.
>>
>> Git and Bazaar both have good-looking frontend sites with separate
>> wikis, so the concept is certainly not something new and can
>> definitely work.
>>
>> For the out-of-date part, I'm not sure. I think the smaller size of
>> the frontend site, and the fact that there are actually people
>> responsible for it (as opposed to the wiki where it's easier to say
>> "eh, someone else can update this") will help in that respect.
>>
>
> So you want to have the page MercurialAPI in a static page instead
> of in the wiki?
>
> I don't think that's exactly a good idea.
>

I don't think it is either. Some pages, especially complicated ones  
like this, are probably better left on the wiki. I'm just pointing out  
one example of the staleness and incoherence that results from lots of  
people working on a wiki over a long time.

What I do want is for first time users of Mercurial to see a landing  
site that's concise and coherent. Once they're a little more  
comfortable with Mercurial (which they certainly are if they're  
looking at its internal API) it's fine for them to go to the wiki.

> In any case, I'm surprised about what people think about the wiki.
>
> It seems like updating the wiki is no longer appreciated. If that's
> the case, then I certainly won't waste my time there any more if the
> wiki is in such a lousy state that the project needs to instate
> another crew that ignores patches.
>
The wiki is great for experienced users that know what they're looking  
for. I use it all the time and definitely appreciate it.

It's not so great for brand new users who hear about Mercurial from a  
friend or blog post and decide to check it out.

I'm not sure what you mean about another crew to ignore patches.  Does  
the current core Mercurial crew ignore patches? It doesn't seem like  
that to me, but then again I haven't submitted many. David has also  
seemed pretty good about accepting patches when I worked with him on  
this.

> And I certainly won't start to send patches for html pages that
> are reviewed by a single person simply to learn that they are
> rejected after 48 hours. No thanks.
>
Actually at some point I could have sworn David and I talked about  
using Markdown or Restructured text or something for the content...  
That doesn't seem to have happened. I wouldn't like editing raw HTML  
for something like this either, so we should definitely look into  
using a sane, clean markup language for all the body copy.

> It's funny that much bigger projects manage to have their front
> pages as a wiki page. Have a look at Wikipedia.
>
Wikipedia is kind of a special case because that's the entire
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[Steve Losh]

Sorry, I hit send before I finished the last section.

On Nov 2, 2009, at 10:22 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
wrote:

> Please keep discussion on-list, so I'm cc-ing the list again
>
> On 02.11.2009 15:52, Steve Losh wrote:
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02.11.2009 15:01, Steve Losh wrote:
>>>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 8:36 AM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 02.11.2009 14:25, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 13:31, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian@...
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> There is no need to start an entirely different platform
>>>>>>> that is doomed to be byte rotten from the start because no
>>>>>>> one will update it.
>>>>>> Not having everyone update it also means coherent language,
>>>>>> structure,
>>>>>> content and more quality control.
>>>>> Oh. So you say our current wiki has incoherent language and
>>>>> structure?
>>>>>
>>>>> Where exactly?
>>>>>
>>>> Quick example off the top of my head: the Release Notes page. The
>>>> table of contents has a bunch of headings for 1.3.0 only. Are there
>>>> not subsections for the other versions? Oh, no, they're there,
>>>> they're
>>>> just not marked as headings for some reason.
>>>>
>>>> I can send a whole slew of examples later once I'm at a computer  
>>>> and
>>>> not a phone, if you like.
>>>>
>>>>> You are missing the point of what a wiki is. Or what it could be.
>>>>>
>>>>>> And content may be king, having the abundance of content that's  
>>>>>> on
>>>>>> our
>>>>>> wiki makes it hard to find the good parts and keep everything  
>>>>>> up to
>>>>>> date.
>>>>> Not at all.
>>>> Really? The API hasn't changed since 1.1? Because that's the  
>>>> version
>>>> listed on the MercurialAPI page.
>>>>
>>>> Reading the API changes page it looks like the API page *has* been
>>>> updated (it mentions ui.promptchoice) but still says "as of version
>>>> 1.1". So actually the page is not out of date but completely  
>>>> *wrong*
>>>> -- if you try to use it to code against the version of Mercurial  
>>>> it  
>>>> says it describes (1.1) you'll probably run into problems.
>>>>
>>> And you think that can be improved by starting a second site,
>>> which is not part of the wiki, so that everyone wanting to
>>> update things has to send patches?
>>
>> For the "incoherent structure" part of things: absolutely. If a small
>> group is reviewing and/or making changes there's less of a chance  
>> that
>> subheadings will be added for some sections and not for others (for
>> example). The site will feel more cohesive which is a good thing to
>> present to first-time users.
>>
>> Git and Bazaar both have good-looking frontend sites with separate
>> wikis, so the concept is certainly not something new and can
>> definitely work.
>>
>> For the out-of-date part, I'm not sure. I think the smaller size of
>> the frontend site, and the fact that there are actually people
>> responsible for it (as opposed to the wiki where it's easier to say
>> "eh, someone else can update this") will help in that respect.
>>
>
> So you want to have the page MercurialAPI in a static page instead
> of in the wiki?
>
> I don't think that's exactly a good idea.
>
> In any case, I'm surprised about what people think about the wiki.
>
> It seems like updating the wiki is no longer appreciated. If that's
> the case, then I certainly won't waste my time there any more if the
> wiki is in such a lousy state that the project needs to instate
> another crew that ignores patches.
>
> And I certainly won't start to send patches for html pages that
> are reviewed by a single person simply to learn that they are
> rejected after 48 hours. No thanks.
>
> It's funny that much bigger projects manage to have their front
> pages as a wiki page. Have a look at Wikipedia.
>

Wikipedia is a special case because the wiki is the entire point of  
the site.

Even so, go to http://wikipedia.org/ (not en.wikipedia.org or another  
language) and the actual landing page IS a static page...
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[Adrian Buehlmann]

On 01.11.2009 19:42, David Soria Parra wrote:

> Hi ML,
>
> you might have already noticed that mercurial.selenic.com has a complete
> new website. The new page is the result of the hg-website project. Thanks
> to Steve, Jesper and Arne for working on the site.
>
> The main repository of the website can be found at:
>  
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website
>
> The content subrepo at:
>  
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-content
>
> And the rendered pages at:
>
>  http://bitbucket.org/segv/hg-website-rendered
>
> If you notice any problems with the new site, let us know and open a
> ticket.
>
> It would be great if someone helps out with the page by writting
> additional content and/or make sure that the content is up to date. If
> you are an english native speaker, you can help us by checking grammar
> and spelling. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want
> to send me a pull request. Patches are always welcome.
>
> Thanks for everybody involved in the project, and Matt for hosting.
>

Since people now prefer the new site and the wiki has been officially
deemed as a second class citizen (low quality), I've decided to stop
editing the current wiki.

Since I don't plan to edit the new site, I don't care that much
about selenic.com any more.
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