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0 pointscxr3y ago0 comments

The same thing GitHub is doing: throwing a bunch of source files into a repo—i.e. the sort of thing that came before wikis (and the reason why wikis were invented in the first place—to displace those kinds of systems)—but then calling that a wiki. It qualifies certainly as what GNU calls a "Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site". But to call it a "wiki" is wildly inappropriate—like saying "integral" when you're talking about derivatives:[1]

> Imagine you're a mathematician, and fellow mathematicians start calling derivatives integrals instead; that's basically how badly the term[] is being misused: it's being used to describe systems that are almost the _exact opposite_ of the concept.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23672561

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pabs33y ago

Whats missing from GitHub/SourceHut "wikis" that would make them actual wikis? At least with GitHub wikis you can edit them from the web like the wikis that came before GitHub.

cxrOP3y ago

Here's how you edit a wiki: spot the typo, hit the Edit button, make your change, and then hit the submit button.*

Many of these new-gen collaboration sites that bill themselves as having wikis result in a request for approval (pull request) instead of an actual edit when you attempt to make a change. (And in the Git-backed ones, the process is usually more egregious; see below.) This proposal/review/approval cycle is exactly what a wiki isn't. GitHub no longer imposes this workflow—there's now an option at least to turn your wiki into, you know, an actual wiki—but even today that option remains off by default so all pages are closed to changes unless the owner makes an effort to toggle the right setting[1]. What these are aren't wikis—they're anti-wikis; if you have a "wiki" that only you can edit, then stop calling it a wiki. (Notably, GitHub's setting doesn't control whether it will continue to advertise it as a wiki or not—instead of just, like, the "docs" tab or something.) Most of these are static sites with extra/fewer steps.

SourceHut is even worse than present-day GitHub, because for all its docs in the man.sr.ht namespace, this is the process you have to use to edit one of its anti-wikis: spot the typo, note the title of the page you're currently on, find the corresponding repo URL in the page footer, leave your browser to clone the repo to your machine, open that directory and locate the source file based on the page title you noted earlier, edit it, make a commit, and then (probably**) push your changes to the original repo. This flies in the face of the definition[2], etymology[3], and entire spirit of the word[4][5].

* Maybe you hit a wall because the specific page has been locked. Fine. Raise your concerns through linked resource for discussions. The fact that individual pages can be locked because e.g. they have a history of being the target of abuse does not negate the meaning of "wiki". If every page is locked down (including pages that don't even exist yet, so you can't go create them), then that makes a material difference—it makes it not a wiki.

** It may not actually be the case that trying to push your changes makes them immediately live on SourceHut—it very well may result in a request for approval by the project owner. No idea. I've never gone through the process on Sourcehut because of how much contempt is deserved by projects that have contributed to the campaign of debasing the term "wiki" to it-means-what-we-feel-like and who-are-you-to-say-that's-wrong levels of uselessness.

1. <https://docs.github.com/en/communities/documenting-your-proj...>

2. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiki#English>

3. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wikiwiki#Hawaiian>

4. <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/wiki>

5. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_wiki_way>

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