Re: How, precisely, can we improve?

Here's a pre-proposal (which could be formalized into a proper proposal) to address the wiki discussion: - Configure the wiki to display the date of last edit prominently. - If the date of last edit is sufficiently long ago (1 year?) loudly warn the reader that the content may be out-of-date. And that's it! I think that solves the problem. The reason this solves the problem is that the ghc-proposals process is already en route to providing the git-backed files that have been floated as the alternative to a wiki. Thus, language features, etc., will be memorialized through the ghc-proposals process. As I understand it, that process already requires the proposal to be updated to a description of the feature as the feature is implemented and refined. We will be left with a nice git repo of feature descriptions. The wiki can remain as a place for less permanent discussions (such as pre-proposals) or pages that use the nice dynamic features of Trac. Is this proposal possible to implement? Does it solve the wiki problem sufficiently? Sometimes, solutions are easy. :) Richard

On Sep 28, 2016, at 10:30 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

Michael’s arguments are compelling.

Manuel

...

Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs mailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org>:

Interesting article. Michael suggests using markdown in repo-controlled files rather than a wiki. I can see the force of that. Maybe we should consider it.

Simon   <> From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 27 September 2016 15:54 To: Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> Cc: Sven Panne mailto:svenpanne@gmail.com>; ghc-devs mailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org> Subject: Re: How, precisely, can we improve?

I think this is relevant to the dicussion: http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2015/08/thoughts-on-documentation https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yesodweb.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F08%2Fthoughts-on-documentation&data=01%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C7ff5e6e47ba5499a774308d3e6e631c2%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1&sdata=uXvFVL2YlOPej5%2Brxms7oUL91OD%2FpqDD9VLaOYtL%2FjQ%3D&reserved=0 Alan

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs mailto:ghc-devs@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://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/ 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 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@haskell.org mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Sven Panne Sent: 27 September 2016 08:46 To: ghc-devs mailto:ghc-devs@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://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc https://phabricator.haskell.org/w/ 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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