[Geany] Moving contents from newsletter.geany.org into the wiki?

[Lex Trotman]

>   * IMHO, if a newsletter is published, a copy of it should be archived
> somewhere, sort of in an "as published" form, so that if somebody needs
> to see what was published, it can be found.
>

Agree, it is, see http://wiki.geany.org/newsletter/start.  And until
Dominic broke it :-), an index of the newsletters was accessible from
the website as well (see previous post).

>   * I would like to see a wiki page used during the writing of each
> article to facilitate collaboration, etc.

Yes I agree.

>
>   * I'd like to see that same wiki page live on after the article is
> published as sort of the canonical source of the information that was
> used in the newsletter, but this should be a living thing.  If
> circumstances change (patches to Geany to change behavior, whatever),
> the content of the wiki page should change accordingly.

Now here we disagree, the newsletter itself should not be modifiable,
its a snapshot in time.

Whilst there is stuff in the newsletter that merits a wiki page and
needs to be maintained, there is stuff in the newsletter that doesn't
merit a wiki page.

>
> As an example, if there is a newsletter article about, I don't
> know--setting margins (not that you'd do that in an editor), the
> article starts out on a wiki page.  When it gets to be in good shape,
> or a publishing deadline arrives, it is dressed up and moved to the
> newsletter (or dressed up after being moved to the newsletter).

Ok, the way I see it and I think the way others see it is that the
wiki is the place for the details of operation and usage of Geany, the
newsletter is not intended to contain detailed complex articles, it is
intended to provide an overview of what is happening in the project,
including referring to detailed howtos or other information added to
the wiki, but also new features, plugins, human interest pieces on the
developers etc.  I'm not sure we want to spam the ML with huge
detailed newsletters.

>
> The newsletter gets published.  The newsletter contains a link to
> the "source" wiki page, and the wiki page contains a link to the
> newsletter.  (It might read: "An article, entitled <title> based on the
> content of this page as of <date> was published in the Geany
> Newsletter, dated <date>.")

Don't see the point of that, since even with your scheme the
newsletter won't add anything to what the wiki says, and the wiki may
be more up to date.

>
> Later a patch is added that changes the method of setting margins.  The
> wiki page should get modified in the wiki way to reflect the new
> method.  (The link to the newsletter might be changed to something
> like:  "An article, entitled <title> based on the *previous* content of
> this page as of <date> was published in the Geany Newsletter, dated
> <date>."
>

And thats just likely to be plain confusing :-)

> Now, finally, the reason for the other wiki page that is immutable and
> contains the original text of the article:  Suppose over the years, the
> content of that wiki page gets so changed that it is no longer
> recognizable as the source of the newsletter article?
>

So thats what the saved HTML, PDFand text newsletters are for.

> Maybe the page just changes so much that it is unrecognizable.  Or, it
> gets filled with so much content that it is decided to split the page
> into two or more pieces.

Thats the way wikis goes :-)

>
> Somebody, reading an old copy of the newsletter (found on google),
> comes to that page from the newsletter and says "wtf" (pronounced
> double u, tee, eff)--this isn't what I'm looking for--something is
> wrong.  At that point, the link to an immutable copy of the article
> would at least let the person know they came to what was the right
> page.

Whats the point of having an immutable wiki copy of the immutable
newsletter both saying the same thing pointing to each other ... and
both now wrong?

>
> And, maybe, then they go back through the old revisions of the mutable
> page to see what happened.

How do they get there if the newsletter only points to the immutable copy?

The newsletter and the wiki are two separate entities with differing
purposes, the newsletter is a snapshot of what is happening at a point
in time, the wiki is a long term community gathered collection on
wisdom? on Geany.

Cheers
Lex