Gentoo Wiki:About
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Gentoo's Wiki Project is responsible for the creation and maintenance of a wiki for general use by developers and community members of Gentoo. The goal of the wiki is to provide an accessible web-based service for easy collaboration on various documents relating to the development and use of the Gentoo distribution, and for related community needs.
Introduction to the Gentoo wiki project
Anybody who has searched the web for Linux-related concepts will probably have seen results from the Gentoo wiki pop up - the documentation on this wiki often has relatively good visibility. What goes on to create the content to the desired standard may be less up front, but the wiki is first of all a tool for writing and collaborating on documentation, as well as a site for reading it.
The Wiki project is a collaborative effort to distill the collective knowledge of the Gentoo community at large into clear, concise, useful documentation, for the benefit of all.
The Wiki lets the community take an active role in helping to maintain documentation. Developers have proficient knowledge of the software they write, but it can be difficult to commit time to both development work and to writing complete, detailed documentation. The wiki was put in place as an efficient solution for developers, documentation writers, users, and even just casual readers, to work together on up to date documentation. It allows fast paced progression, while aiming for the highest standard.
The Gentoo project is all about collaboration, and many, diverse people are coming together everyday to build it. No one user has the amount of time or knowledge necessary to document the details of every package, to explain all possible troubleshooting steps, or to provide meaningful guides for each notable piece of software. Working to provide the best Linux-related documentation available requires a group effort, and the wiki has turned out to be an excellent tool to that end.
Remember, there are other mediums through which to participate, such as the Gentoo IRC channels, forums, mailing lists, Bugzilla - and more!
Why was the wiki started
Before the Wiki, documentation was managed by developers, who wrote documentation in GuideXML format which was then converted to HTML and hosted as sub-pages on the main website. Developers often lacked the time to write documentation, and maintaining documents in this manner was burdensome and inconvenient. Soon there were not enough editors in the Documentation project to keep on top of Gentoo's documentation needs.
Only official developers could publish documentation, as higher privileges were needed in order to have documentation officially hosted. This prevented potential contributors from even starting to help.
In time, community-created Gentoo wikis began popping up all around the web. There were some in English and some in German, but none were officially endorsed by the Gentoo project as a whole. Over the years, many of these sites shut down, but wiki.gentoo.org has turned out to be a great tool to collaborate on the documentation of Gentoo, and of Unix(like) systems in general!
Content license
Unless otherwise expressly stated, all content on the Gentoo wiki is licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0. The Gentoo Name and Logo Usage Guidelines apply.
Technical setup
As we occasionally get inquiries how to set up a wiki like ours, we quickly describe the setup below. Please note that we're unable to support you with setting up all the required components.
The Gentoo Wiki builds upon MediaWiki as wiki software, it was initially developed for use at Wikipedia and its sister sites. We use several extensions to provide additional functionality.
The look-and-feel is based on Bootstrap. As part of the new Gentoo website theme called Tyrian, we've created an extension to Bootstrap that provides Gentoo branding among other things.
The MediaWiki theme needs Bootstrap, as well as the Tyrian extensions to work.
When reusing any of the components, please host all of them on your own server/CDN.
Software licensing and copyrights
All software components are available under the following free licenses:
| Component | Software license | Copyright |
|---|---|---|
| MediaWiki | GPL-2 | © MediaWiki contributors |
| Bootstrap | MIT | © 2011-2015 Twitter, Inc |
| Tyrian Bootstrap theme | MIT | © Gentoo Foundation, Alex Legler |
| Tyrian MediaWiki skin | GPL-2 | © Alex Legler |
Gentoo branding, such as logos and other artwork, can not be reused on your site without appropriate permission. They are included in some of the components listed above and must be removed before (re)implementation.