From the boinc_projects mailing list:

David Anderson wrote:

We need a document describing the runtime environment
for BOINC apps (slot/project directories, shared mem, etc.)
and the rationale for its design.
If someone wants to add this to the Wiki, feel free.

-- David

Thanks to Chris Malton all of the various names registered for the UBW are now all providing a permenant redirect to www.boinc-wiki.info.

Hi Lee

I can see your point.

I imagine the word wiki was originally included in the UBW name to show that the compendium was user-led and editable by users. And now 'wiki' is also included in the name of the separate Trac collection, presumably because it's also editable by users.

I suggested keeping it to distinguish the UBW from the main boinc website info pages.

But for the majority of users who would never dare edit even a spelling mistake if they noticed one, the fact that it uses wiki software is irrelevant. As you say, what matters is the purpose.

But my point still holds. There's nothing stopping a project from having their own Wiki.

Actually, Leiden seems to have their own page in the Dutch version of the Wikipedia.

I wonder how many people even know Trac exists. There was a news item on the main page. But how many of the 10000s of crunchers actually read it?

I link to it in my sig on all of the project forums. But I have no idea how many people click through.

I tend to only tell people to go to Trac when they have a bug to report or I know where the documentation for something is. Like building BOINC using VS. I don't even know if there is a page on the UBW for that.

The Unofficial Boinc Wiki has had this name for ages and should retain the word Wiki in its name on the grounds of prior use and the Wikipedia-like format of its pages. I think the documents accessible from Trac should be renamed.

I agree there is potential for confusion, but Wikipedia != MediaWiki != wiki. As Kathryn pointed out, a wiki is a general concept - a piece of software which lets a group of people edit documents collaboratively. And to do so easily and quickly. The name comes from the Hawaiian word "wiki wiki", which means "quickly".

The best way to avoid confusion is make this point clear.

Right now I deal with three different wiki's, and all are implemented with slightly different software and have slightly different markup conventions. It *is* a bit confusing to keep the three straight, especially as I was starting out. (I've been thinking of creating a wiki page with a table summarizing the differences. Where to put it?)

The Trac component which allows the community (as we define it) to edit documentation at Berkeley is a wiki, so there's no point in removing the name from the URL. It's the wiki at Berkeley.

The Unofficial BOINC wiki is also a wiki. I belive Paul was encouraged to include the "Unofficial" to distinguish it from anything hosted by Berkeley.
Perhaps there are other ways to distinguish it as well? But what we can't do is refer to "THE" wiki, because there are two.

What we can do is try to distinguish the two by purpose and focus. I mentioned earlier the idea that the Berkeley pages could be thought of as being the "Reference Manual". They would be an authoritative source (it's from Berkeley) containing all information about BOINC, arranged as appropriate for a reference document. The UBW could play the role of the "User's Manual", which would be arranged more as a description of how to do the most common or most useful things, not in the form of a reference manual.

Now that's one way the two could be distinguished, but it doesn't have to be the way it's done. In any case, it would be useful to have clear guiding principles which distinguish the roles of the two.

And should there be only two? The idea has come up that it might be useful to have a completely separate wiki to document how to create a BOINC project and BOINC applications. The idea is to keep the more technical material separate from what the casual BOINC volunteer needs to know (which is what would remain in the UBW). In that case there might even be a third wiki in the collection of BOINC documentation.

So my main point is that we should not think of there being "THE" wiki, as there can be several. How best to make this point and dispel confusion among users is something we may still need to work out.

Yes, that all makes good sense and it's a good idea to have all this formerly dispersed stuff accessible from a single set of buttons in Trac. But including the word 'wiki' in two different boinc compendiums will inevitably lead to confusion.

The well-known word 'Wikipedia' is an all-embracing encyclopaedia on a par with the E Britannica. And many people think that the word 'wiki' is just a short form of 'Wikipedia'. So if crunchers see more than one reference to boinc+wiki, many if not most will expect them all to refer to a single all-embracing compendium of boinc documents.

The Unofficial Boinc Wiki has had this name for ages and should retain the word Wiki in its name on the grounds of prior use and the Wikipedia-like format of its pages. I think the documents accessible from Trac should be renamed.

Most people are familiar with MediaWiki as that's what WikiPedia runs off of.

Unfortunately people think the look of Wikipedia = Wiki. And that's just not true.

Trac is a whole system for the development team. And the wiki part of it really is a wiki. It's markup is a subset of Moin-Moin's markup.

All of the old .php pages have been migrated to the Trac wiki and they are no longer being maintained. All the documentation along with the source code and ticketing system are all in Trac. To me, it makes more sense than what they had before (php pages for documentation, CVS for the code repository and BOINCzilla for bugs).

Maybe changing the "wiki" tab to read "documentation" would work. I have no idea if that's possible within the constraints of Trac.

A current confusion for members is that as well as the Unofficial Boinc Wiki

http://boinc-wiki.ath.cx/index.php?title=Main_Page

that is published in the usual wiki format, there's now also the TracWiki/BoincWiki which appears to be funded and published by BOINC in Berkeley. The latter is not in the usual wiki format, though it can be edited by any member (perhaps now with restrictions). My own view is that it was a mistake ever to include the word 'wiki' in the name of the Trac compendium.

If I've completely misunderstood something here, I would guess that the majority of boinc crunchers who've ever looked at boinc/unofficial/official/wiki/info/trac pages are equally confused about what is what.

To use wiki teminology, this needs to be disambiguated. Preferably by renaming ( both?), and NOT by interminable forum posts explaining which is which.

It's a pity we haven't got Paul Buck here to add an opinion.

Dimitris probably didn't put the document into a validation checker. You could email the link to him - his address is at the bottom of the page. There are a few minor details I may contact him about, but he's researched a lot of projects very thoroughly and it's a very worthwhile document.

Boinc-wiki.info seems a good name to use. I don't think we should ever refer to it as boinc.info even if that ever eventually becomes the wiki's web address. The name 'boinc.info' could easily give the impression that it means the main boinc page here:

http://boinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/

If there's a strong objection to hyphens, boinc.wiki.info would surely be just as good.

Don't the list archives require having signed up for the appropriate list? Or am I thinking of something else?

I've added a few more options. You can now search Subversion, and the boinc_dev and boinc_projects list archives.

I'm now thinking this is getting complex enough to deserve a separate page.
The "Search BOINC with Google" page.

But I do like the more fine-grained search functions. Lately I've been using site:blah.com searchterm on Google when I know I've seen something in one place or another. Especially on the forums. The build in forum search leaves a lot to be desired. The way results are presented are confusing for me. But then again... what can we say about me?

An important part of good documentation is to be able to easily search and get exactly what you want.

So I've played with Google's search interface...

How to divide up the search might still be improved. Not everybody knows what "wiki" means, so maybe we need better labels

or an entirely separate search for beginners. But this shows the main idea.

The domain name www.boinc-wiki.info now points to the Unofficial BOINC wiki, and changes even when the IP address of that server changes (which is often).

Is this the name we want it to have now, unless boinc.info becomes available to us?

• caching is defeated, same page with different URL is re-downloaded
  
• search engine rankings; google punishes the "multi domain" approach and sees it as an attempt to increase rankings.
  
• confuses users;
  
  
  
  • are they actually the same?
    
  • are they the same site, or is one a copy of the other?
    
  • which is the true/proper/correct name?
    

  
  

adding HTTP redirects solves/prevents all of these problems

It's JavaScript dependant isn't it? That'll have to be changed to use a better - at least; more accessible - method. You Can't Rely on JavaScript Being Available. Period.

Yes, it uses JavaScript, and I agree that you cannot rely on JavaScript. Thanks for a link backing this up. What you can do is have optional features which use JavaScript to make the experience nicer. But the site must work with JavaScript turned off, and that should always be tested.

Why aren't the patches in the CVS anyway?

I test them on Pirates, then submit them to Rytis for his consideration. I've been slack about the latter step.

This was noted on the SETI@Home news feed. Add it to the inventory

* How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity

Lee Carre wrote:

Eric Myers wrote:

What is the re-editing timeout on this board?

I believe it's an hour by default. Although I have issue with the idea of being able to edit for an hour, then not at all, not even to correct spelling/grammar errors, seems very counter-productive on the usability front lol

I would actually like to see it shorter. As a scientist I'm used to writing in a logbook (either paper or electronic), and the convention is that you just write your observations and move on. Errors are never deleted, just corrected (with a new log entry) or perhaps made invisible. You just go on with it, and the logbook is a part of the input data stream.

You then take this raw data and digest it and put it into a nicer, more organized form. But that is a separate, new document, not the logs.

I've made changes to the software (see Pirates@Home) to support this kind of use for the I2U2 project, though of course we don't have to be so strict here in this discussion.