Matt’s put out a request for folks to sign up to help develop and test WordPress in particular areas. I need to look at where I can contribute, seeing as I’ve been arguing for this kind of thing.
I’m not sure that a wiki-based approach is the best way to go—I’m thinking something nice and hierarchical like Tasks is a better approach—but this could be because I don’t use wikis much but seem to live in my Tasks installations.
Sat 21-Jan-2006 at 17:54
Geof,
I have mixed feelings about the wiki as well, but, having worked on the WordPress Codex (being one of the original documentation people) I both liked it and sometimes hated it. What I hated about it was the fact that I was not knowledgeable enough to know the full power of the wiki tool. There was quite a steep learning curve to it. It also was a source of lots of ego-related problems, and due to its come-one-and-all facilitation, keeping up with changes and such can be an enormous task.
That said, I believe that the WP Codex is very well done, and that is because there has been a core group of very dedicated people who have worked their @sses off to make it so.
I suppose that it’s a bit of a Catch-22 thing when you have an open source project, you want to keep all aspects of it, well, open. Unfortunately that is also the bane of real progress at times in terms of content and quality control. Open source is good, but it is definitely not without its own set of pitfalls.
I’m off to see what I can offer for help myself.
Sat 21-Jan-2006 at 18:47
Craig: Well, I’m about openness, and a wiki is just about as open as you can get. Still, I’m not sure how appropriate of a tool it is; it does great for documentation purposes, but …
Sun 22-Jan-2006 at 14:12
Geof,
I long ago purchased Tasks from Alex King and I agree that it would be a very useful tool to help keep, organize and maintain a multi-faceted project like this. Perhaps someone has to simply step up and “get ‘er done”…
Later, bud.
Sun 22-Jan-2006 at 19:37
How well does Task handle multiple users, is it licenced.
Sun 22-Jan-2006 at 19:42
André: Tasks is a single-user system. TasksPro is the multi-user version. But I’d think that WordPress could take advantage of UseTasks.com’s pledge: “Open Source Developers, contact us about a free account to manage your open source project.”
Mon 23-Jan-2006 at 02:36
WP had an install of TP for a while, but it wasn’t used religiously making it less useful than it could have been.
I think the trend of keeping as much as possible in Trac is probably best for WP, since it allows features and bugs to be tied to checkins.