[pmwiki-users] Linking to posts (Was: pmwiki-users Digest, Vol 2, Issue 41)

[chr at home.se]

On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On the question of linking to messages in the mailing list archives, I'm
> thinking that the correct answer is "don't do it".

> Beyond that, for the pmwiki-docs if an archived message or thread
> is important enough to be referenced from the docs then it probably
> should just be *in* the docs.

I tend to agree with you here, but unfortunately it's sometimes difficult
to know where to draw the line. What I mean is that if I refer to a post,
it's often very useful to be able to look at the entire thread... so it
might be difficult to decide how large part of the thread you should copy.

In addition, if you link to a thread, you'll automatically link to any
future contributions in that thread. So if we were to have a long
discussion on something like the merits of pmwiki v.s.  other wiki
engines, all arguments given in the future could also be found. Anyway, 
this latter aspect is probably less important in the context of 
documenting pmwiki (which is for what I want the intermap prefix).

> A corresponding script on pmwiki.org then prompts the user for the name
> of the page to create or append, grabs the appropriate message from
> pmichaud.com's local archive, formats it for use in a wiki page, and
> presents an edit form where it can be further adjusted and ultimately
> saved to a page.

This sounds like a good idea to me. Not sure how easy it'd be to make it
import an entire thread - or if you always want an entire thread though..
Then again, if we always place the entire thread in an edit form, we could
just leave it up to the author to delete the sections that aren't
interesteing. In addition, the edit form could also contain links to the
corresponding thread and posts on gmane etc (in case you want to see if
the thread has grown later on).

> Another approach would be to have a custom edit form or action on
> pmwiki.org that allows an author to specify an archive url or message-id
> to be inserted into the currently edited page.

I'd probably prefer this approach, since I see the message-id already.
 
> At any rate, I'm thinking the ultimate answer is that we should be
> copying the contents of important archive messages into the wiki and not
> simply referencing the messages [...]

I agree with this. Linking is primarily useful because it's wiki (quick:-)
The handling of expanded threads that you automatically get with linking
is important, but for the purpose of documenting pmwiki, copying a static
thread should be enough.

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr