[OpenIndiana-discuss] wiki.openindiana.org needs to be re/started and fixed

[Nikola M.]

On 11/20/21 10:35, James Madgwick wrote:
>> Manpower is not  a problem, security is solved by fresh install and
>> migrating data. If contributors can access and put it up, and
>> manpower is not the issue..
>> ..there is no problem, but allowing it to happen.
> I believe the problem is that the Wiki was provided by Atlassian
> Confluence software. This is not open source software, it looked like
> Confluence had originally been provided for free to OI because OI is an
> open source project. The version of Confluence which the Wiki was using
> was very old, unstable and most importantly, had many vulnerabilities.
>
> A fresh installation of Confluence is not going to be possible. One
> option could be to create a new community Wiki. It would be best if
> this used an open source platform such as Mediawiki
> (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki). There would also need to be
> agreement on what content should be part of the Wiki and what should be
> in the docs.

Atlassian granted to the then Openindiana named project a license that does not need paying, maybe renewal.
It didn't bother the community to use it for ten years or so.

I think license to Confluence Wiki will be provided also for new install, one just needs to ask Atlassian. And do fresh install and migrate data.
Fresh install of Confluence providing 2 things above is I think very possible, it is not, only if it is not allowed to happen.

I also think that Mediawiki and similar are neat way to move, but it would require a live, working Confluence wiki to move it forward.
But I also think that it could continue to live just fine, on updated Confluence product too, (Providing more maintenance in the future) and can allow easier update,
maintaining wiki editing history - that is really needed to maintain project history, not just delete the history, by making a wiki unavailable.

The manner of deleting everything that happened before , making it unavailable, torching everything and forever starting over is really not a good way of making more things, but making less things as time goes.

And the part about wiki and freedom:

Free editing and creation of the articles on the wiki is not under anyone's veto what should be on it or not, it is only, under reasoned edits, where merit takes precedence over the authoritarian
  power or domain name and infrastructure owners and providers.

If hidden authoritarian organization is in advance limiting the freedom of creativity, then there will be no creativity nor freedom of both projects and users,
and that is in direct contrast and against open source and free software freedoms, including the freedom to contribute.

I don't think agreements or censorship in advance should be made on Wiki content.
Official documentation for the administration and a project could as well be anywhere, in .TXT files and shipped with the product, or on the web site, or wherever.

But Wiki-like content does not allow censorship or scope area to be mandated in advance, it is the place to support user freedom to share articles, howtos, planning, edit each other content in easy to do fashion, or anything related , without consulting with anyone or being censored or needing to use GIT.
It is how it worked for many years and no one have seen any large degradation on it's quality, maybe a little bit of maintenance, that is all.

Having multiple different articles , joining them, having different views and ways of doing things is not only needed, it is required for any open project to bloom.

Wiki is also the freedom _vent_ form ghettoization of both projects, activities, communities, ideas and people,
it is a medium where merit takes precedence over authority and what Free and open projects are made of,
and not on tightly-controlled git repos.

Who knows how many good ideas and development ideas comes from the people interaction and communication?

Open software projects are not created to be private property but to grow and include as much different people as possible, and with current limited infrastructure of killed wiki, One mailing list, one hidden secret mailing list, one site and everything else on Github, it is hugely limited in what could become if there is more freedom to users to contribute.

After so many years of reading, editing and using Wikis , seeing how well it works across the internet,
- I find really strange I need to write this all down.

After all killing freedom of speech, freedom of creating and editing articles,
brainstorming and many more interesting things is not done by limiting types of services and freedom of expression and limiting contribution processes to just "say so".