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Message: [QUOTE="Steve Summit, post: 2442225"] My first comment is that the question of openness versus control is an extremely important one. Much virtual ink has been spilled of late about the alleged unreliability of Wikipedia; that debate seems to have spilled over even into the sacred, narrow-topic realm of clc. Clearly it's appallingly irresponsible for Wikipedia to be openly edited by anyone, even unregistered anonymous users -- but let's think about that for a moment. It's also clearly the case that Wikipedia has been as successful as it has been *because* it can be openly edited by anyone. It's eminently debatable whether unregistered anonymous users should have equally free reign, but it's undisputable that Wikipedia would never have achieved its current momentum if it had been equipped all along with a proper editorial review board and article approval process. Wikipedia is as successful as it is -- and as accurate as it is -- not merely in spite of its open policies, but because of them. As I once had occasion to write, "People continue to wish that C were something it is not, not realizing that if C were what they thought they wanted it to be, it would never have succeeded and they wouldn't be using it in the first place." And I think wikis are much the same. A C Wiki, with its smaller scope and more constrained subject matter, could probably get away with a little more control (aka closedness) than the every-topic-is-fair-game Wikipedia, but I suspect it will still be important that it be relatively open, where by "relatively" I mean "more than would seem prudent". If it is open, yes, it may suffer from some of the same kinds of transient inaccuracy that Wikipedia is notorious for. But if it is closely controlled, and no matter how well-intentioned that control is to prevent vandalism and ill-informed speculation, the project will be at significant risk of never getting off the ground at all. I would urge the proponents of the C Wiki to, as Wikipedia puts it, *be* *bold* and just do it. I didn't ask for anyone's permission or support when I started compiling the FAQ list lo those many years ago, and no one needs permission to start a C Wiki, either. And, more to the point: don't worry too much about getting the model and the charter and the editorial board and the voting policy all perfect before you start. There's another analogy to trot out here, equally if not more applicable in the context of C, namely: Richard P. Gabriel's old dichotomy between "MIT" and "New Jersey", the infamous "Worse is Better" philosophy. If you have a good idea, set it free and let it run. If it's a truly good idea, it will thrive under this freedom and become better than you ever imagined. If it founders, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea anyway, and in any case, it probably wouldn't have fared any better under too-tight control, either. On the specific question of "seeding" a C Wiki with the comp.lang.c FAQ list, I'm still of mixed mind. On the one hand I do hold the copyright and can do almost anything I want with the content, but on the other hand Addison Wesley also has a vested interest and a particular copyright notice they'd like to retain, so it probably won't be possible to just release the whole FAQ list under the GFDL. But I'd like to see if we can do something, because while on the one hand I am (I confess) still possessive enough about the thing that I'll have some qualms about throwing it open for anyone to edit, on the other hand I've been wondering how I'm ever going to cede control over it, since I don't maintain it as actively as I once did and I'm certainly not going to maintain it forever. I've been wondering if it's time to fork it, and doing so in the context of a C Wiki might be just the thing. At the very least we could certainly seed the FAQ List section of a C Wiki with the questions from the existing FAQ list, bidirectionally cross-referenced with the "static" answers I maintain, with the more dynamic, Wiki-side answer sections serving to amplify or annotate or extend or eventually supplant the static ones. But that would be kind of an awkward split, and I can probably see my way clear to having the Wiki-side answers seeded with the existing static answer text also, as long as it's possible to tag those pages with a different, non-GFDL copyright notice. I'll keep thinking about this, and maybe raise the question with the editors I've been talking with at Addison Wesley lately. A couple of other notes: I'm glad to see the Wikimedia software being used, rather than something being written from scratch! They're hinted at in the existing topic outline, but it would be lovely to have a collaboratively written, Wiki-mediated language tutorial, a language reference manual, and a library reference manual in there, too. At any rate, let's see some more discussion about the Wiki idea! I think it has a lot of promise, which is why I'm blathering at length about it in this public post, rather than just sending an email reply to Netocrat. Steve Summit [email]scs@eskimo.com[/email] [/QUOTE]

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