Building a Large Linux Knowledgebase

linuxfan writes "It looks like LinuxQuestions.org is aiming to build the largest independent Linux-related knowledgebase using a Wiki. They are using the same software as Wikipedia (MediaWiki), are using a Creative Commons license and look to be off to a good start."

Comments

Great!

[AtariKee]

This is a great idea for those of us who find certain aspects of Linux a bit daunting. Between outdated HOWTOs and sometimes cryptic MAN pages, newbies such as myself can get a bit frustrated.

My hope is that this database doesn't grow out of control with redundant and/or meaningless data.

yet another wiki

[tronicum]

Of course you can never have enough wikis. Question if how different they are and how they will do moderation (if they do)

Wikipedia is a projekt driven by an community, LinuxQuestions.org is somewhat unclear to characterise: not clearly a community only or a business company selling ads within their content.

As on always you should read the Rules before posting. registration is required, but email is optional.

This is great untill

[miyako]

This seems like a great idea, untill some smartass decides to mask harmful commands as solutions to obscure problems.
Since it looks like anyone can update this thing, what happens when someone sneaks into a solution a command to write morse-code on the hard drive, or some command to rename all the files in /bin so that when you list all the files it does an asciiart of the goatse guy, or just throws in a "sudo rm -rf /" or something.
Not that I don't think this is a good idea, but without some sort of review process I would personally feel nervous about sending some of my more inexperienced friends to the site and having them execute commands all willy nilly.
I know that 99% of the users who would post something would do it out of an honest desire to help, in fact I will probably post a few things that I have had to do as obscure solutions to weird problems myself, but it only takes a single post to a problem that is just commen enough but not too comment to get a lot of people to fsck up their machines.

wiki vs TLDP

[Trestran]

I have been using Wikipedia for a while and one of the biggest selling point IMO is the great browsing experience. I often find myself actually surfing again by going from hyperlink to hyperlink, trying to soak up all the information, something I have stopped doing a while ago with most other webpages. There is lot of very good, indepth content on there.
TLDP is a bunch of mostly technical articles (HOWTO's, guides, FAQs and man pages) that are very usefull, but don't really form a coherent whole. It would be wonderfull to have a somewhat more encyclopedia oriented linux documentation to consult, that is updated consistently to boot. A encyclopedia aproach also alows you to cover a wide spectrum of topic, from, say, obscure technical details to general *nix design philosophies.
However, wiki's for this type of large projects (like wikipedia) need a certain critical mass of contributors for it to, I would think. While I don't know if this project will be "it", I think a wiki aproach would be a great idea.

Why the opposition to docs or info?

[weeboo0104]

Seriously. I visited the local LUG and was appalled at the attitude some of the older members had whenever a relative newbie or younger kid asked them a question. The boilerplate answer from the "gurus"?
"Just read the man pages".

I tried to hit them up for a simple answer to the nodev, user and suid options in fstab and all I got was "Read the man pages".

I wasn't looking to the answers to everything, only the differences between "user" and "nodev" options and when it is best to use them.