Re: SEUL: [Fwd: Re: RedHat Knowledge Base]

[Roger Dingledine <arma@seul.org>]

In message <362980CA.E660F680@cyberis.net>, lyoder@cyberis.net writes:
>Hi,
>
>Someone on the RedHat mailing list mentioned this.  Here's most of the
>original message and my reply to him.  GREAT IDEA ...... this might be
>something SEUL could help with???????  What do you think???
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Re: RedHat Knowledge Base
>Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 15:14:29 -0700
>From: Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net>
>To: manhattan-list@redhat.com
>References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.981017055504.690b-100000@red.prv>
>
>"Mike A. Harris" wrote:
>
>> Forgive me if someone has allready come up with this idea, or
>> even if it is allready implemented.
>> 
>> It just popped into my mind that a wonderful addition to RedHat's
>> website would be some kind of searchable knowledge base of sorts.
>> Something akin (but better) than Microsoft's knowledge base.  It
>> would be in addition to the existing "errata", of course.
>
>I've thought the same thing.  That could be *very* useful.
>
>But how about instead of just a RH KB, make it Linux in general.  Then,
>in each entry, you could have a line like "Applies to ALL" or "Applies
>to RH 5.x" or "applies to all glibc2 systems".  Then even more people
>could use it.
>
>And have a way for people to judge the quality of articles, and get rid
>of bad ones.
>
>Someone should *definitely* set this up, and I could probably help.  How
>could it be funded if it's not RH specific???

It's a neat idea. Something like this should definitely be done, so there
are slicker ways of looking up information than hunting through newsgroup
archives, or skimming faqs/howto's.

As for 'funding it', the only place where funding comes into play is if
you want to hire people to manage the database or add information to it.
If you're only concerned about finding a home for it, there are plenty
of sites (eg SEUL) that would be happy to host it, as well as provide
cvs/shell/etc access to anybody who wants to help maintain it.

The bottom line is that good homes aren't the limiting factor in the
Linux world these days; good reliable volunteers are the limiting
factor (particularly in the non-technical side of things, such as
documentation).

I suspect that if somebody built the skeleton to this in such a way
that people could contribute submissions via the net, then it would
pretty much run itself, as long as there were a couple smart people
managing what got accepted and what didn't.

Feel free to forward this to that list, Micah, if you feel it's
appropriate.

--Roger

Btw, I just put Doug's Commercial Port Advocacy Howto at
http://www.seul.org/pub/howto/cpah.html as planned. It looks much nicer
in html than in text. :)