I don’t think this is a good idea, for all the reasons outlined above.
What information is missing that you need to put in a wiki, that can’t go in the existing documentation locations?
With the static website it’s super easy to create a new Markdown or HTML page, and then edit existing pages (GitHub’s live preview is wiki-like).
You can’t really compare Confluence with GitHub. Confluence supports such things as graphical editing, a full, rich feedback loop, linking, attachments, history, fulltext search, PDF export and the like.
Have a quick look at the documentation: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
The trouble with GitHub as a kind of CMS is that there’s no graphical editor (to my knowledge), linking and renames aren’t automatically handled, so one rename will break your existing site, there’s absolutely no automatic hierarchy and navigation, and for the most part, the feedback loop from code to publish is hours or days rather than seconds - most humans like to see something instantly and won’t bother if it involves having to manually code HTML, send for publish, get published, etc.
Anyway, until I get the OK from one of the core team, which doesn’t look like it’s forthcoming, I won’t be emailing Atlassian.
Thanks for all the thoughts, ladies and gents!
Technically there already is a wiki:
It just doesn’t seem to be user editable. I’d be in favor of moving all those pages into the website and limiting the Trac wiki pages to one or two, specific to Trac.
I really don’t think the dev team has a say in this. If the community decides to create a wiki, or forum, or IRC channel for whatever reason, it should do so. Generating wiki knowledge more easily is a valid reason IMO. If the info will be available freely, people interested in improving the official Haiku website can “backport” it. I see a win-win here.
Just don’t be disappointed if you find that only few will create content for that wiki… It’s a small community. 
The reason I ask for permission is that I’ll approach Atlassian and ask them for an open source licence on behalf of the Haiku OS. Is that okay with anyone who represents the Haiku Inc owner of the trademark?
Thanks all.
Right. That may be an issue, when the majority isn’t in convinced of the success of an official wiki. Would be nice to gauge the community participation in a wiki first. Isn’t there some free system that can be used and maybe later imported?
I’m a bit wary that people will expect the Haiku project to maintain additional infrastructure if the wiki idea doesn’t take off with community contributions. Lest it be deserted as I expect the Facebook and Twitter channels are (I only assume here, I’m not on either…)
Plus, as always, if people like to write articles, guides etc. they can post it as markdown (e.g. online editor) and we’ll see where to put it. So, nobody has to be afraid of creating a pull request at github. 
I think that a wiki could be useful specially to maintain a hardware “compatibility list” (like the old HardwareMatrix, o the one that existed in haikuware). Also, to put info about old BeOS apps that still works in Haiku, etc.
Actually, I moved that off of the website and onto the HaikuPorts wiki some time ago. (It was getting out of date and it was hard to update on the website; now any of the HaikuPorts contributors can edit it.)
Yes, that one’s rather new. But I suspect if it too becomes outdated, it’ll find its way into the wiki as well…
One thing that may help make website changes easier is to add a “Edit on GitHub” link which takes the user directly to the file on GitHub, ready to edit. Should be fairly easy with some Hugo magic.
Yes, similar to the discuss link, but for Github.
Hello together,
i have a short brief questions.
Why another wiki site?
Why not use the besly?
Well, the layout of the besly is getting old and many instructions are / were for zeta and beos. A revision of the besly is currently taking place in the background.
The orientation will be explicit on haiku. The old besly will be also vailable.
All instructions were tested during the creation. Of course it can not work by changing the programming, of course you would need back-up from the one who noticed it.
I think it would be nice if more of the besly took part.
lorglas