To /wiki or not to /wiki

Wed Nov 14 16:55:44 UTC 2012

On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 08:41 -0800, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> On 11/14/2012 08:33 AM, Vinzenz Feenstra wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > What about using .htaccess or URL rewrite for solving this?
> 
> Thanks, yes, that is the way we handle the change technically. With
> OpenShift we'll use a .htaccess file.
> 
> The question here is more of "should we make that change".
> 
> Currently, the wiki follows the MediaWiki recommended format of having
> /wiki in the URL.

I'd drop /wiki completely if technically possible and if not, then use
something like /ovirt or /o

Mike

> 
> - Karsten
> 
> > regards,
> > 
> > On 11/14/2012 05:18 PM, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> >> This is the best place for this discussion ... sort of.[1]
> >>
> >> This topic is slightly complex, I'll sort things here in to some
> >> sections to help.
> >>
> >> == Background ==
> >>
> >> With MediaWiki serving www.ovirt.org, that means we will be redirecting
> >> away from (and no longer using) wiki.ovirt.org.
> >>
> >> MW is going to provide the top-level pages, and standard MW
> >> configuration is to have everything appear after /wiki. It is not
> >> impossible to change this, but it has 3 main caveats:
> >>
> >> 1. Some stuff is going to be a bit harder - we have to resolve
> >> robots.txt and favicon.ico as not wiki articles, for example.[2]
> >>
> >> 2. We may get occasional bugs that people who use /wiki won't get.
> >>
> >> 3. mediawiki.org says, "this is not supported by the MediaWiki
> >> developers. So if your scheme doesn't work with a new MediaWiki version,
> >> you're on your own."
> >>
> >> Relevant sources:
> >>
> >> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Wiki_in_site_root_directory
> >> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Apache
> >>
> >> == Options ==
> >>
> >> A. All site URLs are in the form of http://ovirt.org/wiki/Page_name
> >>
> >> B. All site URLs are in the form of http://ovirt.org/w/Page_name
> >>
> >> C. All site URLs are in the form of http://ovirt.org/Page_name
> >>
> >> == My opinion ==
> >>
> >> I like option C - I want to see clean URLs that hide implementation
> >> details.
> >>
> >> My opinion on those concerns about upstream: that's open source. It's
> >> hard to do anything without having problems unique or rare due to your
> >> circumstances, getting bugs that others don't see who follow the
> >> out-of-the-box installation, and to wonder if you won't be able to get
> >> community support for the unusual configuration.
> >>
> >> As it happens, we've been running MediaWiki for the last year using the
> >> EPEL RPM -- which is not supported by the MediaWiki developers. When I
> >> went last Fall looking for help with something, #mediawiki told me to
> >> get rid of the RPM and use the ZIP instead, then come back for help.
> >> (The package maintainer (smooge) has been helpful in all cases instead,
> >> so I've been able to avoid having to go to the upstream developers for
> >> help again.)
> >>
> >> We have no guarantee that MediaWiki developers will support the
> >> OpenShift quickstart. It also does not use the ZIP out-of-the-box
> >> install, so it likely is unsupported.
> >>
> >> My conclusion here is, personally, I have to not care that we're going
> >> to be unsupported, since being supported is actually worse. (I'd rather
> >> run unsupported with a good RPM than supported with an unsigned ZIP.)
> >>
> >> Links from anywhere in the site that point to "the wiki" should point to
> >> a landing page e.g. [[OVirt wiki]] that organizes the pages on the wiki,
> >> exposing popular categories, etc. Thus, "the wiki" is not identified by
> >> a specific URL, it is identified by the type of content on the page - is
> >> it intended to be community documentation (a wiki) by it's category.
> >>
> >> == Footnotes ==
> >>
> >> [1] I want to acknowledge as we start that part of Garrett's expertise
> >> that he brings to oVirt is the human-computer interface skillset. That
> >> may not be a skill that many others of us on this list have. Are there
> >> some folks in the rest of oVirt development we can invite to this
> >> discussion? UI or UX folks, for example?
> >>
> >> The reason why this matters is we want to separate our geeky-preferences
> >> from the way things tend to work best for a broad range of humans. For
> >> example, I love sub-domains, they work well for my brain - I'm so much
> >> happier with lists.ovirt.org/mailman/... than www.ovirt.org/mailman...
> >> But if Garrett told me that is not the best way to present the
> >> information for a wide audience, I would have to give that opinion high
> >> credence. Heck, I'm prepared to do some pretzel twists to make it
> >> happen, based on that. (I've also always secretly loathed that MediaWiki
> >> has the /wiki requirement.)
> >>
> >> [2] I suspect we can special-case them in the .htaccess file.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Infra mailing list
> >> Infra at ovirt.org
> >> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/infra
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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