using a wiki for documentation (and introducing short-term beginning BSD admin book project)

Justin C. Sherrill justin at shiningsilence.com
Fri Jan 5 07:27:52 PST 2007


On Fri, January 5, 2007 10:13 am, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

> In hindsight, probably just doing the work in a wiki probably would have
> been best (other than the fact that original wiki, I think, was turned
> off). Because a wiki makes it easier and quicker for a larger community to
> contribute back. At least that is what I am hoping ...

To run with that thought...  I had suggested probably 2 years ago we use a
wiki instead of docbook, and while the idea was shot down then, I'm
thinking that wikis are common enough now that it's becoming just as
capable a tool.

The hassle of both understanding docbook/SGML and having the extensive
toolchain working on a DragonFly system has worked out so that there's
been almost no updates to the Handbook.  It's significantly more complex
to maintain than a wiki with no immediate benefit at this point, in my
opinion.

> A collaborative, short-term open source authoring project to quickly write
> a book covering the basics from the 2005 BSDA Certification Requirements
> Document was recently started. The BSD Certification Group's BSDA (BSD
> Associate) Certification is for BSD Unix system administrators with light
> to moderate skills.

Is this suitable for a Handbook replacement?

Is the wiki going to be maintained/reused past the publishing date of the
book?






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