Re: Wiki clarification - Mailing list pgsql-www

Mike Ellsworth wrote:
> I'd appreciate some clarification on usage of the Wiki.
>
> When it was first introduced, the usage guidelines were a bit vague -
> and as I recall a statement was made (+ -)
> by Josh Berkus that ~ as long as it had something to do with
> PostgreSQL, it would be ok.
>   

There are two sets of policies here.  The one at 
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_Wiki:About suggests the Wiki 
is intended for "user-contributed PostgreSQL documentation", which your 
page didn't quite seem to be.  So by that one alone, it would be 
inappropriate.  The rest of the policies for the project are listed at 
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Policies 

Now, there really should be a "Wiki approval policy" for commercial 
content there.  What Josh told you may in fact be the ultimate policy 
here, and there is already some other material on the wiki that is in 
the same fuzzy area your page appears to be.  But the line here is not 
clearly documented yet to contributors or to site moderators.

> Perhaps my expectations are a bit high, but I would think that level
> would at least warrant the courtesy of an email before a wiki page was
> deleted and locked.
>   

Not really deleted--cleared and locked.  Had it really been deleted I 
wouldn't have been able to restore the page to operation, which I just 
did:  http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Younicycle is back as you left it 
before.

Sorry about blocking your content for a bit here, but I didn't have any 
idea who had put that info there.  It was locked until we figured out 
who did, or whoever it was identified themselves after seeing the page 
was unavailable.  In retrospect, I should have used the E-mail contact 
system on the wiki itself to contact you, and left a more clear 
suggestion on the cleared page itself as to what you should do.  I'll 
make sure that's incorporated into the recommend procedure for when we 
run into a page that may not follow project policies next time.  You are 
literally the first case like this that's happened--something commercial 
appeared and it wasn't obvious who posted it--so the right way to handle 
things hadn't been considered and documented yet. 

My apologies for the temporary outage here, and I would recommend you 
fill out your user profile at 
http://wiki.postgresql.org/index.php?title=User:Henryhemma&action=edit 
to make it clear who you are and how you can be reached so we don't have 
any confusion there in the future.

As far as further working on that page, I would recommend waiting until 
you get a clear ruling here on the appropriateness of your page for the 
Wiki before spending any more time working on it.  I doubt the page 
needs to get deleted altogether such that you'll lose all of the time 
you put into it.  It may just need to be rewritten to be consistent with 
the goal of the wiki--user-oriented documentation related to 
PostgreSQL.  That's not really my decision to make though, just giving 
my personal opinion.

-- 
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support  www.2ndQuadrant.us