 | NixOS Wiki | 257 Members |
| Welcome to the *unofficial* nixos wiki Matrix chat | NOT a replacement for Wiki admin email / ALL requests will be ignored | https://nixos.wiki | 53 Servers |
| NixOS Wiki | 257 Members |
| Welcome to the *unofficial* nixos wiki Matrix chat | NOT a replacement for Wiki admin email / ALL requests will be ignored | https://nixos.wiki | 53 Servers |
| Sender | Message | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Apr 2024 | ||
 fadenb | And just before anyone claims something different: This is exactly what I communicated to Jonas C. (representing the NixOS foundation) a while back. Nothing has changed. | 17:51:33 |
 nixos-wiki-rcbot | [[Polybar]] https://nixos.wiki/wiki/index.php?diff=11517&oldid=6994 * Edays * (+13) Edit the path to example configuration file. | 19:17:59 |
 Luigi joined the room. | 19:32:44 | |
 hexa left the room. | 20:17:11 | |
 @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | In reply to @fadenb:utzutzutz.net I tried to read up on the history of the wiki drama. From where I stand, the confusion for newcomers is significant. (Because I am one | 20:44:04 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | Oops, didnt finish writing, one sec | 20:44:16 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | * I tried to read up on the history of the wiki drama. But I am kinda new to this whole ecosystem, so forgive me for asking a question that has surely been answered somewhere: how do you see the balance between the pros and cons of this mildly antagonistic situation? From where I stand, the confusion for newcomers is significant. (Because I am one) But clearly, you see benefits on the aide of running this wiki disconnected from the nixos foundation that I cant see because I lack the full context of what went wrong in the past. I am curious what went down to make this balance out. If you feel like explaining. If you don't feel like it, thats okay too. | 20:48:09 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | * Oops, didnt finish writing, one sec (edit: done) | 20:48:10 |
| fadenb | P: Before I answer the rest, I appreciate that you do not start with a demand for explanations (like so many others tend to do :/ ) | 20:49:00 |
| fadenb | Spreading information over many different places is not great. I think this is the one thing most folks agree on. The only thing worse is if the information does not exist anywhere at all. This is also what lead to nixos.wiki in the first place. The (at that time) only wiki (part of nixos.org) was shut down with barely any notice and information was lost/inaccessible for a while. -> We created a new wiki. Specifically, a new "unofficial" wiki. The unofficial part is very relevant. It was not endorsed, hosted, operated by anyone/anything that could be understood as "official" (so no foundation involvement, Eelco not involved, ...). Luckily, some people joined and provided many great things (like the wiki styling which resembled the nixos.org page at that time) and obviously also a lot of great content. Up until here I would claim there is/was no "drama" ;) After a while, people started to have expectations for nixos.wiki. This included everything from content, how it should be structured, what should go into the wiki and what should not go into the wiki (there was concern that the existence of the wiki takes away focus from improving the official documentation), ... Many of those folks engaged either by just doing it and restructuring/cleaning up the content, others came to the IRC channel and this room here and discussed. So far, all good. Over time, those expectations also started to cover the operations aspects of the wiki. E.g., how it should be hosted, that is "must be run on a NixOS system" (which was particularly funny because it was already at that time), that is "must use mediawiki like it is packaged in nixpkgs", .... This is where things turned interesting. People demand, demand, demand but no-one ever was ever volunteering to help on those topics. This is for sure nothing new, anyone involved in open source projects knows this from Github issues that demand new features. ... | 21:04:04 |
| fadenb | This is when I personally noticed that misinformation was actively being spread by multiple people. I will not rehash all of that (search twitter / channel archives if you really want to know ;) ). A set of always repeating misinformation blocks was spread. At times it even looked like it was a coordinated campaign (🤷). Later this was expanded by things that were technically correct (e.g., running quite old software versions) and it was claimed that this was "problematic". Though, this was never substantiated (outside of some convenience functions not being available). Then there was a point where claims were made up that nixos.wiki could vanish any moment (everything from unpaid domains to missing backups 🤷). I took this as confirmation that those activities did not stem from misunderstanding but are actively malicious (what was stated was simply not the truth but people kept repeating it). Very basic FUD spreading ... | 21:12:23 |
 lassulus | I want to say that in one of our first emails(Wed, 19 Jan 2022 18:22:27) we volunteered to do a nixos repo together for the wiki, but we never received an answer. I'm not happy with how thing developed but I tried very hard to cooperate on maintaining it together. | 21:12:26 |
| lassulus | * I want to say that in one of our first emails(Wed, 19 Jan 2022 18:22:27) we volunteered to do a nixos repo together for the wiki, but we never received an answer. I'm not happy with how things developed but I tried very hard to cooperate on maintaining it together. | 21:13:40 |
| fadenb | While this was going on more thing started happen (I will give one example, other things are not / no longer shared in public on advice of police authorities that are involved). E.g., this is when the regular attacks on wiki infrastructure began (which until today often reference some of the misinformation mentioned before (quite often as part of flood messages)). Whether this is the same people or someone who wants to make it look that way? I do not know, I do not care. ... | 21:18:28 |
| fadenb | Around this time I started to rigorously block/ban/ignore anyone who approached me in a manner that I deemed hostile/unfriendly (killfile grew significantly :p ). Also around that time some people actually approached me and asked whether they could help out in any way. Some of them are still part of the nixos.wiki admin team as of today). Though, due to the sheer amount of lies being spread and hostilities involved most of them have not shared with anyone outside that they are actually part of the team. There is a somewhat recent exception which is Dom who agreed to be an additional public face (you might have seen some wiki edits) | 21:21:23 |
| lassulus | We obviously never tried to ddos the wiki, which was at the time the only public wiki we had available :) | 21:21:30 |
| fadenb | lassulus: While I totally accept that it was not you, it is happening (actually, right now, cloudflare is doing a fantastic job as usual) | 21:22:05 |
| fadenb | The dos topic has some more substance to it though this overlaps with other things that are not publicly shared. While I was warned by authorities that the saying "The wheels of justice grind slowly" is very true I did not expect this to stretch of that many years. | 21:23:57 |
| fadenb | P: So, while this was now very adhoc and a bit less structured than I hoped it should give you somewhat of an overview | 21:27:44 |
| lassulus | I can understand some frustration, but we tried to extend our hands many times and tried to actually help you in maintenance, but we sadly never got any answers, never any insights into the nature of the hosting and mostly ghosting on every question we had on the direction the wiki was taking. I don't have anything against you, but some people got burned and frustrated with the wiki experience and there was no way to alleviate their pain | 21:31:39 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | In reply to @fadenb:utzutzutz.netI appreciate you taking the time to answer this in so much detail. It sucks that you had/have to deal with the DOS attacks, the personal attacks, etc. I can only imagine how that feels. Im sorry that this happened. | 21:35:46 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | Having seen and read much drama in the open source communities over the last ~20 years, I see so many patterns here that repeat themselves over and over again. | 21:36:42 |
| fadenb |
| 21:39:20 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | In reply to @lassulus:lassul.us I can believe that both your account and fadenb's are completely true from your respective perspectives. What a frustrating problem. If only we could all sit together on some couches and have a beverage or two. | 21:39:39 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | In reply to @fadenb:utzutzutz.netPeople have gotten used to open source communities being curated carefully by community managers and marketing-savvy folk and it now feels frustrating when something takes a normal amount of time to come together. Especially for a purely (?) volunteer-run community. | 21:43:49 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | Um, i forgot the point: thats a bad thing, btw. But it is where we are, I guess | 21:47:10 |
| lassulus | well the email was signed by most of the team of the wiki back then, it was not that it came from some outsider. | 21:48:13 |
| lassulus | I don't want to blame anything, I just want to tell how stuff happened and why the stuff is how it is now | 21:49:07 |
| @hellerbarde:fairydust.space | Didnt mean to apply that directly to you and your email. It is a kind of background radiation is what I meant. | 21:49:11 |
| lassulus | * I don't want to blame anyone, I just want to tell how stuff happened and why the stuff is how it is now | 21:49:16 |