Slashdot Mirror
After A Year, Emacswiki Alternative Shutting Down
About a year ago, someone decided that EmacsWiki was outdated and unorganized, to the detriment of the Emacs community. So, he started a new wiki (WikiEmacs, choosing Mediawiki instead of Oddmuse, and attempting to give it a saner organizational structure). In the end, his project failed to grain traction, and it's shutting down for the greater good of Emacs: "I want to extend a big public apology to Alex Schroeder for my harsh criticism of EmacsWiki. One year later I see that stewarding documentation projects and nurturing a healthy community around them is much harder than writing software. I’m but a humble software engineer and you’ll have to forgive me for my misguided actions. I hope that something good has(will) come up from all this drama. At the very least I urge everyone who cares for EmacsWiki to try and clean up, extend and improve at least a couple of articles on subjects that are of importance to him. I know that’s something I’ll be doing from now on."
Is there an "ls" or "rm" community just out of interest?
There used to be an "rm" community, but it got deleted :P
Summation 2
Is this serious?
YES.
Is there a "vi community"?
YES.
Who the hell cares enough to even bother?
Anybody who uses these powerful and complex applications. Both apps are capable of highly complicated things, and somewhere out there are talented people who know how to do them. I'm not one of them, but I'm getting there. From custom syntax highlighting to macros, scripts, and more (hell, you can use emacs to read email and/or Usenet, etc.).
As for you, you can keep using whatever other software you like.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Emacs is somewhat more sophisticated than simply an editor. If there can be communities trading tips and advice for Microsoft Office there sure as hell can be communities for Emacs.
As a vim user I naturally don't have to talk to a community because this superior editor gives me telepathic powers and a glossy, easy-to-brush mane.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Shutting down in less than a year because the project got too little attention is foolish as it takes years for most users to discover you. I had no idea it existed, if I knew, I would have tried it as I do believe that EmacsWiki has a fair amount of problems. Shutting down and dragging down all content and time that users were willing to contribute is just ridiculously irresponsible. EmacsWiki may not be perfect, but it has been around for years and I am fairly confident that the owner will not decide to shut it down tomorrow or next year on a whim like this guy.
I'm not shutting down the project on a whim, a lot of thought and discussions with members of Emacs community are involved in it. The content will be preserved on EmacsWiki and I'll continue to work with Alex and the other members of the EmacsWiki team to (hopefully) improve and clean it up.
The editor being M-x vi-mode?