[Pmwiki-users] Information gems regarding PmWiki

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 01:18:51PM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> After seeing what I wrote below,
> I'd better warn that it's a bit off-topic :-)

I don't think it's off-topic at all.  To quickly address one piece of it:

> Could you comment on what the general "policy" is for adding things to the 
> pmichaud-site? Especially to the pages in the PmWiki/-group.
> I know it's a wiki, so we can all edit it... but I'm still confused at 
> times about what I should add and where. 

The general policy on pmichaud.com is that anyone can add and edit pages,
period.  If there's a page or group I don't want anyone to modify, or if
the general policy becomes unworkable due to malicious edits, then I'll
start adding layers of protection to prevent such modifications.

I'm still working on writing up a good copyright policy for things appearing
on pmichaud.com.  It's taking me a while because, as in most legal matters,
a poorly written policy is often worse than no policy at all.  I can give
some broad generalizations... original contributions in the Cookbook can
have whatever copyrights the authors wish to attach to them, pages added
to the PmWiki group are considered to be contributions to the PmWiki
project itself (probably under the GPL or GFDL), and I retain copyright
for all of the pages that appear in the pmichaud.com-styled groups.

> The answer will probably make a 
> nice page somewhere in the PmWiki/-group btw... (oh wait... then that page 
> will be copied when pmwiki is installed somewhere else..)

Not every page in the PmWiki group is automatically placed in a 
distribution--I have to explicitly add the page to my CVS repository for
that to happen.  There are already a lot of pages in the PmWiki group on 
pmichaud.com that aren't placed into the distributions.  So, it's certainly
okay to add pages directly to the PmWiki group.

On pmichaud.com there are three WikiGroups associated with PmWiki:
   PmWiki - documentation and other pages related to the distribution
            and use of PmWiki
   Cookbook - recipes, module contributions, and suggestions for
              customizing PmWiki to particular installation requirements
   Development - discussions and prototypes about experimental or
              developing features

> Idea: Maybe pmichaud.com needs a dual pmwiki-installation? One that simply 
> contains documentation for the latest 'stable' release, and one where we 
> other users can add pages/information knowing that it won't be released 
> without you auditing it first?

Pmichaud.com notifies me anytime a page is changed on the site, and I watch
changes to the existing PmWiki documentation fairly closely.  I also always
do a final review of the documentation changes prior to making a release...
especially to see if there are any new pages that need to be included in
the release.  So, it's fairly safe to make changes to PmWiki's documentation
and know that at least one person will be reviewing it before it goes
into a distribution.

Pm