Using the Open Source Wiki

We've already started to see posts here about the inner workings of the viewer code. Wouldn't it be better if these went into the wiki? For example, if you figure out how SomeThing works, create a "How SomeThing works" entry in the wiki, and post your information there.

Then, either you can attach questions as comments or discussion there in the Wiki, or you can even phrase your wiki entry as a sort of indirect question, as in...

It looks like SomeThing works by doing such-and-such. Would it be better if it did so-and-so instead?"

The advantage of the Wiki is that the information continues to be re-organized and streamlined, as opposed to forums where the information tends to be spread out all over the place.

While wiki is nice, it'd probably be also nice if dedicated forum section was added (in Technical Talk maybe?) as alternative for this kind of information exchange. If someone would then want to copy relevant info to the wiki then by all means go ahead... but having it this way could perhaps help with organization of 3rd party projects or stuff like questions "what does this piece of code do and why" which may go quite a bit offtrack and as such don't really need to be part of the wiki pages. O.o

This is a great idea, and one that all engineering shops should follow. Keeps the code clean (comments are revision nightmares) and gives everyone a chance to discuss and collaborate in a wiki mode.

May I request that you post your suggestions on the sldev mailing list? This is where a lot of the chatter is going on right now and where it'll be most useful.

Cheers,

Iron.

I have a thread suggesting the creation of an OpenSl forum in the technical section, OpenSL forum?

The OpenSL wiki directs people with questions on builds and such to post in the technical section, why not give this specialized area of inquiry a specific and easily findable place in the forums instead of having it dispursed throughout Resident Answers, the three existing technical forums, the scripting forums, and everywhere else it might end up?

the question is: which wiki should we post to?

there are like dozens of wiki's just on LSL... probably hundreds more on other SL stuff...

The bounds of discussion at the wiki and mailing list are pretty tight. Only yesterday somebody expressed concern about certain discussions dominating and causing paralysis in the developer community. ISTM an informal forum here would help maintain more formal and productive discussions over there.

Damnit, I misspelled disperse. That word was hurting my brain looking at it. My mispelling turned it into a different word, disburse.

Open Source SL posts will, in the absence of a home, be "dispersed", not "disbursed" throughout the entire forum structure. The resident website forum and the feature viewer forum seem to be the catchall places for the forum category impaired these days.

My original suggestion was about the Wiki creted for the new, Open Source Viewer only.

Yes, ther are numerous other wikis. The lsl wiki is a good example, it is useful, but there is a lot of information in these forums sort of randomly scattered around that should be incorporated into the wiki, but aren't. I am as guilty as anybody about this.

So, since the official Open Source view Wiki is new, we should use it for things related to open source view work.

Or not. It was just a suggestion.

Point made above, you can edit the wiki that SL provides.

Here is a great place to start: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_architecture

An even better place, http://opensecondlife.org/wiki/Main_Page

Expanding the wiki is a great idea but still not the complete answer. I agree with Suezanne on this one that we need a dedicated forum exclusively for OpenSL. Just imagine trying to learn scripting with only access to the scripting wiki? There is only so far you could get. Doing searches in the Scripting forum though reveals complete answers with several different viewpoints. Originally I asked in the Answers Forum about making a deidicated forum here but now I am not sure that it is the best solution. The one major fault with creating the OpenSL forum here is that there is limited access. I have nothing against unverified accounts and welcome them in the MG but for some strange reason and even though LL created and opened the floodgates to the unverifieds they do not allow them in this forum.

JMHO but I think that since SL viewer is open now there will be other programmers that will come just to see what they can do. Wouldn't want to block any of them from having access to where ever the forum is placed. The setup as it is needs a lot of improvement. I came across one error that is stopping me from compiling newview.exe and yet the answer wasn't in either the mailing list, the wiki discussion or commom errors and have tryed repeatedly to get the answer from irc today.

Please, please, please lets get a forum setup and sooner then later.

I absolutely agree. As stated above, I think an inevitably informal forum here would help discussion remain formal and focused on the mailing list. (Ie. it's less likely to get bogged down with ethical disputes and such.)

/wanders off to check out your compiling issues. I'm a little obsessed after adding my own compiler-barf workarounds to the wiki.