[Feedback wanted] Introducing the "Internet Computer Wiki"

Developers
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Ahoy, IC Devs!

I would like to introduce you to something that a few of us have been working on (@JensGroth , @johan , and others): a wiki for the Internet Computer. We have a raw, barebones MVP which we think crosses the threshold of showing the germ of the idea… while still clearly needing lots of help.

https://wiki.internetcomputer.org/wiki/

The Intent

The intent is simple: create a source of truth for documentation that is managed and operated by the IC community.

What kind of content it should have

All kinds!

We are envisioning having a wiki that answers questions for people interested in topics as varied as:

  • Cryptography
  • User experience for dapps
  • Governance
  • Tokenomics
  • Networking
  • Glossary of terms like “canister”, “neurons”, “principal”, etc…
  • Ecosystem

Prior art and inspiration

There are a few community-driven wikis in crypto which do a good job of creating a source of truth that can help people understand the projects:

Users and Moderators

Like in many wikis, there is a hierarchy of editorial control. As of January 20, 2022, it is deliberately overly simple on the IC wiki so we can see what patterns emerge. It does not have the complex hierarchy that wikipedia has for example.

a. User - a regular user can view and submit changes for content
b. Moderators - Moderators review and accept content. Moderators can make more moderators.

The initial bootstrap moderators are @JensGroth, @johan, Aisling Connolly (Senior Research Scientist at DFINITY who just started last week), and myself. The idea is that we add more moderators, specially non-dfinity ones.

Why is this wiki not on the IC?

Simple answer: we needed Wiki-software and we did not find any that could be deployed to a canister trivially. We wanted to see what the community thought of this experiment before investing much further. The intent is that if there is traction and interest, it will be migrated to the IC.

is this the “official” wiki for the IC?

Only the community can answer that. As a decentralized protocol, there is no one entity that can designate something as official (and certainly not me!), so it is upto the community to decide via traction and reputation.

What kind of feedback are you look for?

Everything. Clearly the wiki is MVP, so anything from usability to content to topics, etc… is welcome!

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If you see content you want to edit, add, delete, dont hesitate to make an account. Ping this thread if you have any issues.

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I should also say something about the rollout strategy here. My intent is:

  1. Soft-launch on dev forum to get feedback, iterate
  2. Increasingly promote more widely as wiki iterates
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I am very supportive of this idea. Although we have developer documentation, it is only an introduction to development, some ordinary people just like the coin speculation should need this wiki very much.This will make them know more about ic.

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Update:

We added a few more pages and cleaned a bunch based on feedback. Thank you everyone for helping.

We will continue adding more…

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this is really cool, thank you for this learning resources.

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You are very much welcome!

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Just created this page: How-To: Create an NNS motion proposal - Internet Computer Wiki

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Hi @diegop , I wanted to revisit the idea of deploying a wiki in the Internet Computer. I remember you already investigated the topic many months ago and concluded that at the time it was not easily feasible. Do you know if this is now a possibility and/or what would be the key developments required to move forward?

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I still want to do that, just have not prioritized how to best do this. Very possible things have changed to make it easier

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I would like to help with that. Do you remeber what did you identify as a limitation at the time?

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Thanks for asking,

The requirements for a wiki:

1. Content moderation - Ability to edit content via submissions which people then review/approve (to avoid spam and NSFW content)
2. User authentication - Ability to have editors, submitters, etc
3. Easy creation of pages for those who cannot code

When I looked at the wiki-like software to do meet these requirements, it all looked too complicated to wrap in a canister and deploy. the IC-native software (at the time) did not meet these requirements.