consider moving wiki work from GitHub-hosted to W3-hosted

[TallTed]

Please forgive the built-in bias of this issue.

GitHub wiki is tragically under-featured. Major lacks that I run into start with these:

• There is no "alert" mechanism associated with GitHub wiki pages, so the only way to discover that a wiki page has been updated is to visit the page.
• There is no comparison across page versions, so you cannot see what changes have been made, for instance, since your last visit, nor since the last edit you know you saw, nor between this version and the previous, etc.

I have not yet encountered a feature that GitHub Wiki has that other Wikis lack.

Historically, all W3 WGs (and various other W3 entities) were automatically (whether by human or bot, I don't know) assigned a homepage within the overarching W3 Wiki, which is a fully-fledged wiki, which does provide all the things that the GitHub wiki fails to provide.

I strongly advise and request that we consider moving the RDF-star wiki work from the GitHub wiki to the W3 wiki.

[gkellogg]

I think the W3 Wiki is good for longer-term pages, such as "Cool URIs". While the purpose of our local Wiki entries is more for operational WG topics (although, some of them may become useful to retain in the long term).

Alternatively, we could do as I did for the Text direction discussion, and use Markdown files in the repo. This would use the normal PR process for creating an updating; the Wik turns into an index.

[TallTed]

First, note that Cool URIs isn't in the W3 Wiki; it's an Interest Group NOTE from the Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group.

The W3 Wiki contains both longer-term pages and shorter-term pages. See, for semi-random examples, the Linked Data Platform Working Group, the Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group, the CSV on the Web Working Group, and, of particular relevance, the [2011] RDF [1.1] Working Group. Also, note that the Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group wiki section includes such shorter-term pages as SweoIG/Misc/LogoIdeas....

That said, I would be fine with Markdown (or HTML or plaintext or whatever makes sense for each) files within the repo. Mostly, I want change notification though I prefer collaboration on, rather than after-the-fact notification of, such changes. I do prefer git-managed documents over wiki pages, and advise and request that changes go through PRs, typically allowing 3–7 days for comment before merging, rather than direct commits (which are analogous to edits to a wiki).

[gkellogg]

I created PRs to move the following pages:

• 40 for RDF Terminology

• 41 for the Editor's Guide

• 42 for Systems and Acronyms

Once merged, the wiki entries can be updated to be pointers.

There is already document for Text Direction.

The Scribes wiki seems best left as a wiki.

[TallTed]

The Scribes wiki seems best left as a wiki.

Apparently I'm dense, because I completely failed to find the history page which contains the compare-two-versions option, as well as the hidden Atom feed (though I do not consider this a useful replacement of the emailed updates and website notifications generated by interaction with managed documents).

I have not been able to find where/how to EDIT the wiki content, which the Scribes page needs...

The web says there should be an EDIT button at the upper right, but I find none.

Further research reveals, By default, only people with write access to your repository can make changes to wikis, although you can allow everyone on GitHub.com to contribute to a wiki in a public repository. I find this to be another argument in favor of abandoning the GitHub wiki as it limits and hinders participation.

Even more exciting, GitHub believes that "A README file quickly tells what your project can do, while you can use a wiki to provide additional documentation." In other words, they don't consider wiki content to be short-term nor frequently changing.

I suggest and request that the Scribes page — and indeed, every other current GitHub wiki page — be migrated to "normal" git-managed docs, and that henceforth we pretend the GitHub wiki doesn't exist.

[TallTed]

@gkellogg — I have removed the complete label, as I don't consider it complete, given my comments above. I think it's fair for you to un-assign yourself, as the task is larger than originally conceived. I'd be happy to take it on, if I have sufficient repo permissions to do all that's necessary.

[gkellogg]

I have not been able to find where/how to EDIT the wiki content, which the Scribes page needs...

It could be a matter of repo permissions. When looking a Scribes, I see "Edit" and "New page" buttons; the "edit" button allows the source to be edited. In this case, under the title, I see the following:

Adrian Gschwend edited this page 3 hours ago · 4 revisions

That link gets you the history of changes to the page. On the history page, you can select revisions to compare using the "Compare revisions" button.

But, since you've asked, I'll create a PR to add Scribes as a document.

[gkellogg]

Added #43 for Scribes.