Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Revisiting hosted wiki software

[Noah Slater]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 01:30:15AM +0100, Karl Berry wrote:
> My understanding follows ...
>
>     I spent a bit of time thinking about this and wondered why this was
>     any more of an issue on a wiki than a public mailing list,
>
> On a mailing list, it is clear that any given message comes from its author.
> Therefore the views of a random poster can't be reasonably mistaken for the
> views of GNU.
>
> This is not true on a wiki.  If the url ends in .gnu.org, it is in fact likely
> that a casual reader will assume that pretty much everything is said and
> linked on there is approved by GNU.

Ah, this is a good point that I had not thought about.

> I assume FSF staff are monitoring that wiki.  That is the promise rms has
> asked wiki-proposers to make -- to monitor thir wiki and remove things
> promoting proprietary software, etc., etc.  Not just let it go wild.

When you ask the ASF for a wiki you are required to send all the changesets to a
mailing list post-hoc, and the project owners are required to monitor that
mailing list for edit and make the appropriate changes.

> I am a bit doubtful that merely having a web form with a check box would
> suffice as a promise, but maybe.

Perhaps require the project owners to fill in a questionnaire requesting the
wiki with a formal promise that goes along the lines of:

  1. As a GNU hosted wiki, the focus should be to provide support for free
     software, not open source. You must be mindful of the power of words and 
the
     importance of framing the issues you discuss and work on in the best 
possible
     terms. Do you understand these concerns? Why are they are important?

  2. All the changes made to the wiki must be sent to a project mailing list. Do
     you promise to check every change made and correct mistakes or wording
     problems as required?

Just an idea.

> So aside from the issues Sylvain has raised, I do think that any general wiki
> feature on savannah should be run by rms.

Sure.

-- 
Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater