Re-making a Wiki: The New LSL Portal

As many of you are probably aware from other recent threads here, the situation with the existing LSL wiki, graciously hosted by Catherine Omega, has prompted members of the community to begin a new effort to re-create the famous LSL wiki from scratch.

This is due to a number of reasons, some of them related to difficulties maintaining stable hosting for the existing wiki as well as a need to make sure that all content placed into the wiki is done according to a viable Open Documentation license. This is to alleviate concerns about the existing LSL wiki's content being entangled with potential copyright issues as a result of its original management.

The new Wiki will be hosted as part of Linden Lab's MediaWiki implementation at http://wiki.secondlife.com. In addition, the wiki will also be actively mirrored at several alternate third-party sites, in case there should ever arise another situation where either Linden Lab's servers are unavailable, or if Linden Lab decides, again, to spin it off.

We invite everyone with experience writing technical documentation and/or experience with the LSL scripting language to help us create a new, updated version which will serve us for many years to come.

To get involved, join us here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal_To-do

The Wiki contains a great deal of documentation, but if you have any questions, post them in the discussions sections of the appropriate pages.

Thank you for your time and attention, as well as any contributions you may offer. We look forward to seeing you there!

(Please sticky -- thanks!)

Are we actually expected to re-write everything from scratch? I understand licensing is an issue, but I simply don't feel like coming up with entirely new content for every function, not to mention all the additional pages that describe various techniques.

I think I'll stick with lslwiki.com, or wherever the old wiki moves to, even if it goes down occasionally.

That's fine. We're just offering something that we think will be better and more stable in the long run. There's nothing saying that it has to be the only one.

ok guys how many threads do we need about this?

Well most of it is straight from LL's docs when it comes to basic function descriptions.

Much of the other stuff, isn't unique to LSL and could be copied from Wikipedia.

Yeah, I know, but someone has to format it and type it in (copy/paste it in). It needs to be organized and linked.

This thread was meant to be a sticky link to the new LSL Wiki project; nothing more. The other threads are about the discussion of what options we had. Well, we opted for this solution out of all the ones discussed. So, rather than have people go digging through 50-80 posts in 3-4 other threads to find what was decided, and where to go see/help out, I decided to put it all in one place. I'm sorry if you think that is spamming, Osgeld, but I don't see it that way. If it bothers you, then don't read it. Problem solved.

sorry i offended you .. i logged in and BLAM 1/4 the page is about wiki squabbles, in which will be null by the end of the month (most likley)

go here its the new wiki

NO go here its the SF wiki

no no this is a wiki colarberation project sticky it so LL can leave it sticky for the next X YEARS as we rewrite 2,128 pages of basic functionality

i feel if your savy to whats going on your pretty up to date on the recent news, theres 4 threads that address the same issue, some of them seem to be some form of a pissing contest for the most user support, this is a hot topic if you really care your in on the discussion

IMO take my january 5th 2007 copy and inport it SOMEWHERE so we can all move along with our lives, i seriously doubt that your going to find many ppl complaining about copyright on publicly availible OPEN works

esp on linden labs servers, for linden labs software, there shouldnt be any ligit issues ... your not gonna sell a book are you?

i just looked @ my webstats, in the last 2 hours ive goten 6083 hits and 17mb of text data transfered for my wiki mirror, its fast and up to date ...

I'm going though and creating pages for all the functions.

I'd like some input on the template I'm using.

Take a look at llFrand as an example.

I won't create any more till I hear back some thoughts on it.

(I'm not keen on revising it when all 328 function definitions are in place).

I like it, give me a while and I'm sure I'll come up with something to nit pick about though :}

Looks good to me Strife. Maybe a whole new start isn't such a bad idea after all.

Thats great.
I say thats a go

We need a easy way to navigate back to the root lslportal page.

perhaps a link in the navagation pane?

It is a horrid idea.

The function layout template is here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Function_Style
Discussion on it here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:LSL_Function_Style

I guess it's a good idea to start fresh, as long as the old wiki remains available for the next year or so, since I suppose it will take at least that long to bring the new one up to the same level of helpfulness. I'll be glad to help.

I like the format you have proposed for articles about functions, but I have this comment:

It's too bad "technical restrictions" require an inital capital letter. Maybe a hack that would make this unnecessary would be to add a prefix identifying the object, something like:

Function: llFrand [for functions that return a value)
Procedure: llSay [for functions that do not return a value]
Event: listen [for events]

Or just preceed everything with LSL- llFunctionname

Cause already in the index we are gonna fill up the L's

This will also respect other parts of the wiki to have all lsl portal content under one thing.

This sounds good to me. It also leaves open the door for later searching functionality that can just strip the "LSL - " prefix to find specific functions.

There is an argument for Lee Ludd's suggestion as well, so Functions and Events can be searched for, but I'd suggest not separating Functions from Procedures, that's not really relevant in a language like LSL.

Personally, I'm inclined to Dimentox's suggestion based on KISS.

Then it will never get completed as there is meager incentive to duplicate what already available.

Furthermore, if you spend all your time putting templates up for review, I'll guarantee it will never get completed.

Finally, this "my wiki is better than yours" contest is second only in stupidity to putting yet more public effort into an LL controlled site. Osgeld has it right.

Sure. Anything that gets rid of the initial cap is fine with me.

How about software that doesn't impose arbitrary restrictions? Nah, that would be silly.

Oh, and having a look at the new, improved "portal", I think it should be renamed "Resident Control Freak Wiki" because putting a single avatar's name on it would violate the ToS or sumptin.

No complaints here. As soon as the format is settled I'll start working on some pages myself.

Every page should have a header that goes back to the portal index not the wiki index.
if we could even geta link in the left hand would be great.

I posted a request on the Jira page to have an LSL namespace added as well

LSL - llListen

I myself was thinking precisely of this idea.. prefixing all LSL pages with "LSL - ", just last night while looking at the entries on the rpgstats wiki. It's silly to have to have a capital letter as the first letter.. but it seems like a simple enough solution.

Of course, the other idea I had, would be to have the naming convention be a little more informativ. For example:

LSL Event: money
LSL Event: touch_start
LSL Operator: && (and)
LSL Function: llListen

just a thought. That would pre-organize things by their status as an LSL entry, AND by type (thus having alphabetical function more as "by class - then alphabetically"

Eh.. it's just an idea.. take it or leave it.. just tossing it out there.

Of course, I'd also like to vote for a serifed font for the title of each item... sometimes the way entries look without serifs (EG: llInstantMessage) can be a little confusing.

I *really* like that idea.