Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cxr 1427 days ago
Who has an account on this wiki and how did you get it? The wiki pages have an Edit button, but it uses an HTTP auth prompt, and cancelling it doesn't provide any details about how to register. I also don't see anything after looking around elsewhere on the wiki itself, nor does Googling turn anything up.
1 comments

It is an open secret within the Squeak community. Participate in the community for a while and I'm sure someone will be happy to give it to you.
> Participate in the community for a while

Well, you see, that's what I'm trying to do here...

Well, this isn't the right place to do it. At least introduce yourself on the squeak-dev or beginners email lists and ask for the ability to edit the swiki there. It would also help to mention your immediate plans.

The swiki is extremely old-school and simplistic and has suffered defacement issues in the past. Also, unfortunately, the overall Smalltalk community (at least the open source part) is both too small and at this time terribly fractured. Resources like the swiki have had little real attention for many many years.

My immediate plans are (were) to, you know, edit the wiki.

> I recently opened up an issue of Skeptic Magazine and saw a headline, "Why there something rather than nothing". My first thought was, "Great job, guys." But, it's easy to make a typo, even in a headline. My second thought was, "If this were a wiki, I would correct it."

<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_wiki_way>

Zero chance that I'm going to jump through hoops to enjoy the privilege of giving away something that is already meant solely to benefit others while expecting to get nothing in return—my only expectation being that it isn't a difficult/hostile experience.

> Resources like the swiki have had little real attention for many many years.

I hope you can appreciate the perverse irony of this remark.

Sure, but the swiki is a tool for the community. What makes you think you should be able to edit it without a fair amount of knowledge and experience that can really only be gained by participation within the community?

If it was possible to give you access to a single page to fix some language or a misspelling that would be one thing. But the authorization on the swiki is far from granular. Once you have access you can change pretty much any page, including the starting page.

Almost like a wiki, even.