threads / discuss / 59191

The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

Subject: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

## tl;dr

10 messages between Feb 3, 2023 and Feb 9, 2023.

replies: 9people: 5as markdown or json

Konstantin Ryabitsev· Feb 3, 2023, 18:22 UTC · lore
Hello, all:
There is a very sad and unkempt wiki instance running on git.wiki.kernel.org.

It grew up in the age when Internet was young, bright-eyed, and "anyone can edit it" approach was seen as a net positive thing. Then, as the armies of bots and SEO consultants became increasingly difficult to fight off, the instance ended up being locked down just to avoid having to spend all day rolling back spam edits.

Today, most information found on the wiki is probably outdated and therefore potentially harmful. I would like to solicit ideas what to do with this resource.

# Should it be migrated to RTD-style docs?

We have stopped providing new Mediawiki instances at kernel.org quite some time back, replacing the offering with Dokuwiki. Today, we don't spin up new Dokuwiki instances either and everyone is steered towards readthedocs-style documentation instead, which is a much more sane and manageable medium than wikis, especially when it comes to technical docs (see https://korg.docs.kernel.org/docs.html).

However, it's unclear if this is even needed for this wiki, considering the existence of https://git-scm.com/doc.

# Should it be archived as a static site?

It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a link to https://git-scm.com/doc

# Should it be archived and put out of its misery?

The last option is to just archive the site and put it out of its increasingly irrelevant existence.

Thoughts?
-Konstantin
Junio C Hamano· Feb 3, 2023, 19:43 UTC · re: Konstantin Ryabitsev · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> writes:
Show 15 quoted lines
> Today, most information found on the wiki is probably outdated and therefore
> potentially harmful. I would like to solicit ideas what to do with this
> resource.
>
> # Should it be migrated to RTD-style docs?
>
> We have stopped providing new Mediawiki instances at kernel.org quite some
> time back, replacing the offering with Dokuwiki. Today, we don't spin up new
> Dokuwiki instances either and everyone is steered towards readthedocs-style
> documentation instead, which is a much more sane and manageable medium than
> wikis, especially when it comes to technical docs (see
> https://korg.docs.kernel.org/docs.html).
>
> However, it's unclear if this is even needed for this wiki, considering the
> existence of https://git-scm.com/doc.

I tend to agree with this point. Presense on RTD is nice, but what is left in git.wiki.k.o is not something I'd consider porting it over; the contents of git-scm.com/ might be but that is off topic here.

Show 5 quoted lines
> # Should it be archived as a static site?
>
> It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> link to https://git-scm.com/doc

I do not know the size of regular traffic to the git.wiki.k.o; if many people visit (on purpose or by mistake) there to warrant such a redirection, then it is very much appreciated. No current contents with just "redirect in 5 seconds---please update your bookmark" may be fine.

> # Should it be archived and put out of its misery?
>
> The last option is to just archive the site and put it out of its increasingly
> irrelevant existence.

Archiving so that people can retrieve the contents for whatever reason may be needed no matter what other things are done, I would imagine.

Thanks.
Jeff King· Feb 4, 2023, 11:27 UTC · re: Konstantin Ryabitsev · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 01:22:55PM -0500, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> Today, most information found on the wiki is probably outdated and therefore
> potentially harmful. I would like to solicit ideas what to do with this
> resource.

Yeah, my assumption is that it's totally out of date these days. I admit that's subjective and maybe there are people maintaining/using it. I kind of suspect not, though (and if they don't reply to this thread, perhaps we can assume they don't exist, or at least not connected enough to the development community to matter).

Show 11 quoted lines
> # Should it be migrated to RTD-style docs?
> 
> We have stopped providing new Mediawiki instances at kernel.org quite some
> time back, replacing the offering with Dokuwiki. Today, we don't spin up new
> Dokuwiki instances either and everyone is steered towards readthedocs-style
> documentation instead, which is a much more sane and manageable medium than
> wikis, especially when it comes to technical docs (see
> https://korg.docs.kernel.org/docs.html).
> 
> However, it's unclear if this is even needed for this wiki, considering the
> existence of https://git-scm.com/doc.

Yeah, for any content we prepare as a community, the Documentation/ is the right spot, and git-scm.com is just mirroring those already.

For meta-information like current-year GSoC ideas, etc, we've been using git.github.io. It's not quite a wiki, in that you need access and contribute to it via the git clone, but IMHO both of those are features. Spam is a non-issue, and anybody who wants to help out can do so either by being a committer, or just making a one-off pull request.

Show 5 quoted lines
> # Should it be archived as a static site?
> 
> It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> link to https://git-scm.com/doc

This would be my preference, just because some of the old content may still have value. Some pages (like old gsoc stuff) would better redirect to git.github.io, but it is probably not worth the time to even try to classify pages.

> # Should it be archived and put out of its misery?
> 
> The last option is to just archive the site and put it out of its increasingly
> irrelevant existence.

I'm also OK with this, though if it is not too much work to serve the old content with a warning that it may be out-of-date, that seems better.

-Peff
Andrei Rybak· Feb 4, 2023, 13:13 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On 04/02/2023 12:27, Jeff King wrote:
Show 11 quoted lines
> On Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 01:22:55PM -0500, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> 
>> Today, most information found on the wiki is probably outdated and therefore
>> potentially harmful. I would like to solicit ideas what to do with this
>> resource.
> 
> Yeah, my assumption is that it's totally out of date these days. I admit
> that's subjective and maybe there are people maintaining/using it. I
> kind of suspect not, though (and if they don't reply to this thread,
> perhaps we can assume they don't exist, or at least not connected enough
> to the development community to matter).

My knowledge of MediaWiki is not good enough to give a definitive answer, but it seems that active editing stopped at the end of 2021.

One of most actively edited articles seems to be "GitHosting":
   https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=GitHosting&action=history

It seems that it is mostly edited by editors who are promoting Git hosting they are affiliated with. Article "Interfaces, frontends, and tools" also got a lot of edits in 2020 and some in 2021:

   https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Interfaces,_frontends,_and_tools&action=history
Diff of the latest edit on the article "Git" is a bit telling:
   https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Git&diff=31274&oldid=8420

Website https://git-scm.com existed in some form since at least 2008, current website's initial commit dates to 2012-03-06, but the article "Git" on the wiki didn't have a link to it until 2019. The article also hasn't been edited at all between 2010 and 2019.

Christian Couder· Feb 4, 2023, 14:03 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Sat, Feb 4, 2023 at 12:48 PM Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 01:22:55PM -0500, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
Show 10 quoted lines
> > # Should it be archived as a static site?
> >
> > It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> > header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> > link to https://git-scm.com/doc
>
> This would be my preference, just because some of the old content may
> still have value. Some pages (like old gsoc stuff) would better redirect
> to git.github.io, but it is probably not worth the time to even try to
> classify pages.

This would be my preference too. I agree that some old content might still have some value. We could also move or redirect some old content to git.github.io, but I am not sure it's worth the time either.

Show 8 quoted lines
> > # Should it be archived and put out of its misery?
> >
> > The last option is to just archive the site and put it out of its increasingly
> > irrelevant existence.
>
> I'm also OK with this, though if it is not too much work to serve the
> old content with a warning that it may be out-of-date, that seems
> better.
I agree.

Thanks, Christian.

Konstantin Ryabitsev· Feb 6, 2023, 21:41 UTC · re: Christian Couder · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Sat, Feb 04, 2023 at 03:03:16PM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:
Show 14 quoted lines
> > > # Should it be archived as a static site?
> > >
> > > It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> > > header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> > > link to https://git-scm.com/doc
> >
> > This would be my preference, just because some of the old content may
> > still have value. Some pages (like old gsoc stuff) would better redirect
> > to git.github.io, but it is probably not worth the time to even try to
> > classify pages.
> 
> This would be my preference too. I agree that some old content might
> still have some value. We could also move or redirect some old content
> to git.github.io, but I am not sure it's worth the time either.
Okay, here's what I have:
https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/git.wiki.kernel.org/

It's just a static scrape excluding all Special: and User: pages, and carrying a very large "OBSOLETE CONTENT" warning.

The idea is that requests to git.wiki.kernel.org will be redirected to the archive pages and thus hopefully preserve the content for historical reasons.

Unless someone objects within the next few days, I'll proceed with this plan.
-K
Christian Couder· Feb 7, 2023, 11:53 UTC · re: Konstantin Ryabitsev · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 10:41 PM Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

Show 28 quoted lines
>
> On Sat, Feb 04, 2023 at 03:03:16PM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:
> > > > # Should it be archived as a static site?
> > > >
> > > > It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> > > > header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> > > > link to https://git-scm.com/doc
> > >
> > > This would be my preference, just because some of the old content may
> > > still have value. Some pages (like old gsoc stuff) would better redirect
> > > to git.github.io, but it is probably not worth the time to even try to
> > > classify pages.
> >
> > This would be my preference too. I agree that some old content might
> > still have some value. We could also move or redirect some old content
> > to git.github.io, but I am not sure it's worth the time either.
>
> Okay, here's what I have:
>
> https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/git.wiki.kernel.org/
>
> It's just a static scrape excluding all Special: and User: pages, and carrying
> a very large "OBSOLETE CONTENT" warning.
>
> The idea is that requests to git.wiki.kernel.org will be redirected to the
> archive pages and thus hopefully preserve the content for historical reasons.
>
> Unless someone objects within the next few days, I'll proceed with this plan.
Great, thanks!
Jeff King· Feb 7, 2023, 18:09 UTC · re: Konstantin Ryabitsev · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 04:41:01PM -0500, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
Show 22 quoted lines
> On Sat, Feb 04, 2023 at 03:03:16PM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:
> > > > # Should it be archived as a static site?
> > > >
> > > > It's possible to turn git.wiki.kernel.org into a static site with a large
> > > > header on every page that it contains historical archival information, with a
> > > > link to https://git-scm.com/doc
> > >
> > > This would be my preference, just because some of the old content may
> > > still have value. Some pages (like old gsoc stuff) would better redirect
> > > to git.github.io, but it is probably not worth the time to even try to
> > > classify pages.
> > 
> > This would be my preference too. I agree that some old content might
> > still have some value. We could also move or redirect some old content
> > to git.github.io, but I am not sure it's worth the time either.
> 
> Okay, here's what I have:
> 
> https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/git.wiki.kernel.org/
> 
> It's just a static scrape excluding all Special: and User: pages, and carrying
> a very large "OBSOLETE CONTENT" warning.
That looks just fine to me. Thanks for taking care of this!
-Peff
Konstantin Ryabitsev· Feb 9, 2023, 21:31 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

On Tue, Feb 07, 2023 at 01:09:58PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
Show 8 quoted lines
> > Okay, here's what I have:
> > 
> > https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/git.wiki.kernel.org/
> > 
> > It's just a static scrape excluding all Special: and User: pages, and carrying
> > a very large "OBSOLETE CONTENT" warning.
> 
> That looks just fine to me. Thanks for taking care of this!

This is now done. Thank you, everyone. The git.wiki.kernel.org site is now permanently archived.

-Konstantin
Junio C Hamano· Feb 9, 2023, 21:46 UTC · re: Konstantin Ryabitsev · lore

Re: The sad state of git.wiki.kernel.org

Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> writes:
Show 12 quoted lines
> On Tue, Feb 07, 2023 at 01:09:58PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
>> > Okay, here's what I have:
>> > 
>> > https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/git.wiki.kernel.org/
>> > 
>> > It's just a static scrape excluding all Special: and User: pages, and carrying
>> > a very large "OBSOLETE CONTENT" warning.
>> 
>> That looks just fine to me. Thanks for taking care of this!
>
> This is now done. Thank you, everyone.
> The git.wiki.kernel.org site is now permanently archived.
Thanks.

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