I've started using Emacs a few years ago (we have a youngun' here!), and EmacsWiki is the best concentrated source of information around Emacs.
Which is a crying shame.
I agree with the author: while the goal is noble, the implementation is terrible. Discussions and content are mixed up, for example look at the cscope page [1]. Which is the latest and best package for integrating the tool?
It's 2012. Unix has had package management for decades. It's the age of app stores, why am I still downloading elisp files from a wiki? I want the equivalent of vimscripts! I want something better!
Emacs is an incredibly powerful tool, which has had many features decades before those newfangled IDEs. Unfortunately that also means that there's incredible inertia in the community. Here's hoping that the OP's article can trigger something.
To be fair, Emacs has had a package manager package, package.el (heh), for quite some time now. It can download and install packages from a repository, like Marmalade, though I've found it to be a bit shaky in the past; I've had to manually delete the files of a botched package, and then who-knows-what to get it to fully disappear.
It's, thankfully, been bundled in the default Emacs 24. And, thank the ghosts of the ancient lispers, that savagery of having a million-zillion different autocompletion interfaces for every damned thing may finally be put to an end with the new standardized autocompletion thingy.
> The articles are littered with crappy advice confusing beginners, have little structure and are filled with ridiculous questions (questions in an wiki???)
The original wiki has questions, back-and-forth-discussion and loosely structured content on many pages. Maybe some pages need to be maintained/wikified/deprecated, but the EmacsWiki itself is fine. Also, it was never intended to be the authoritative GNU Emacs wiki. GNU Emacs is self-documenting. The non-standard stuff needs the wiki more.
Sure, if you're extremely comfortable reading emacs lisp spread across many files.
Just like Spanish doesn't need a dictionary, since it's self-defining once you move to Spain, and spend three months learning it via the total immersion method.
Having experienced it myself, I tend to agree with the general point that getting started with Emacs is not helped by the online resources available.
However, I don't think it is constructive to wish that EmacsWiki would die in order for something better to come up. We are all free to start another wiki, built on any cms we prefer, and if MediaWiki is your choice, go for it. Assemble your moderators, make it better than anything EmacsWiki has provided to date, and you'll be the darling of the Emacs community. That would be constructive. :)
It also overlooks one of the hardest parts of building a community site like emacswiki, which is, well, building the community!
Anyone can install mediawiki. Not many people will be able to put the time and effort that the emacswiki community has to keep a site going.
About the only part of the article that I agree with is that it's time to start moving code off the wiki. Though this isn't a "deadline" type problem, it should simply be discouraged going forward and packages of interest should start migrating.
You know, I didn't get that vibe. I felt that the author brought up a lot of legitimate complaints about EmacsWiki. Having used EmacsWiki, I agree with a lot of them, especially the stuff about the advice on the wiki usually being very dated and confusing. The choice of software might be the least of the complaints, but the author didn't seem to dwell on it.
Poorly written post on several fronts. The English is poor (forgivable), but the points made about the structure and security of wikis are not well taken, and reflect of misunderstanding of WikiNature (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiNature).
On a more practical level, the post points out some flaws in EmacsWiki, asserts that some arbitrary alternatives would be better (MediaWiki vs. OddMuse), but does not propose a path to get there from here or explain how the switch would be worth the work.
Personally, I think it would be kind of neat to convert the EmacsWiki into OrgMode, push it to a Git repo and publish it the way Worg is published.
I disagree that you can handwave around public editing of executable code that is by convention copied and pasted to hundreds of machines by invoking "WikiNature".
I don't agree with the post on many levels. But "The English is poor"? That complaint sounds like a low blow. Native speakers are a minority of total English speakers, and the majority may have something to say, too.
I'm still giving you an upvote because you bring up Worg.
I upvoted you, but mostly because I hate downvotes for unpopular stances.
But please answer this question: how does using Github make you "less free"? All parts of Github (even parts of the web interface, like the wiki) can be used stand-alone. All your data can be easily dumped, most of them in a ready-to-reuse form (the git repositories, the wiki and github pages). So, from lock-in perspective, gitorious and github are quite alike. What exactly is it that makes you, as an individual, less free then using gitorious? Sure, the software is less free, but your data: not so much.
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|14 years ago|reply
Which is a crying shame.
I agree with the author: while the goal is noble, the implementation is terrible. Discussions and content are mixed up, for example look at the cscope page [1]. Which is the latest and best package for integrating the tool?
It's 2012. Unix has had package management for decades. It's the age of app stores, why am I still downloading elisp files from a wiki? I want the equivalent of vimscripts! I want something better!
Emacs is an incredibly powerful tool, which has had many features decades before those newfangled IDEs. Unfortunately that also means that there's incredible inertia in the community. Here's hoping that the OP's article can trigger something.
[1] http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CScopeAndEmacs
[+] [-] whateverer|14 years ago|reply
It's, thankfully, been bundled in the default Emacs 24. And, thank the ghosts of the ancient lispers, that savagery of having a million-zillion different autocompletion interfaces for every damned thing may finally be put to an end with the new standardized autocompletion thingy.
Source: http://batsov.com/articles/2011/08/19/a-peek-at-emacs24/
[+] [-] rincewind|14 years ago|reply
The original wiki has questions, back-and-forth-discussion and loosely structured content on many pages. Maybe some pages need to be maintained/wikified/deprecated, but the EmacsWiki itself is fine. Also, it was never intended to be the authoritative GNU Emacs wiki. GNU Emacs is self-documenting. The non-standard stuff needs the wiki more.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
Sure, if you're extremely comfortable reading emacs lisp spread across many files.
Just like Spanish doesn't need a dictionary, since it's self-defining once you move to Spain, and spend three months learning it via the total immersion method.
[+] [-] mhd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinleyd|14 years ago|reply
However, I don't think it is constructive to wish that EmacsWiki would die in order for something better to come up. We are all free to start another wiki, built on any cms we prefer, and if MediaWiki is your choice, go for it. Assemble your moderators, make it better than anything EmacsWiki has provided to date, and you'll be the darling of the Emacs community. That would be constructive. :)
[+] [-] skeptical|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lkozma|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cag_ii|14 years ago|reply
Anyone can install mediawiki. Not many people will be able to put the time and effort that the emacswiki community has to keep a site going.
About the only part of the article that I agree with is that it's time to start moving code off the wiki. Though this isn't a "deadline" type problem, it should simply be discouraged going forward and packages of interest should start migrating.
[+] [-] justinhj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reddit_clone|14 years ago|reply
Indeed. I smell some personal bias/agenda here.
You can not kill off an existing , actively used system (however crufty it may be) without a fully functional alternate in place.
[+] [-] astine|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpdillon|14 years ago|reply
On a more practical level, the post points out some flaws in EmacsWiki, asserts that some arbitrary alternatives would be better (MediaWiki vs. OddMuse), but does not propose a path to get there from here or explain how the switch would be worth the work.
Personally, I think it would be kind of neat to convert the EmacsWiki into OrgMode, push it to a Git repo and publish it the way Worg is published.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stroboskop|14 years ago|reply
I'm still giving you an upvote because you bring up Worg.
[+] [-] bozhidar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Abomonog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Argorak|14 years ago|reply
But please answer this question: how does using Github make you "less free"? All parts of Github (even parts of the web interface, like the wiki) can be used stand-alone. All your data can be easily dumped, most of them in a ready-to-reuse form (the git repositories, the wiki and github pages). So, from lock-in perspective, gitorious and github are quite alike. What exactly is it that makes you, as an individual, less free then using gitorious? Sure, the software is less free, but your data: not so much.
[+] [-] apgwoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samgranieri|14 years ago|reply
I tried emacs for a week , gave up, went back to textmate, and have since switched to vim.
[+] [-] adulau|14 years ago|reply
http://www.foo.be/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/OddmuseGit
So you can grab all the emacswiki website (based on Oddmuse) and convert it to your favorite markup/wiki relying on a git repository.
s/rant/do/g
[+] [-] pnathan|14 years ago|reply