Wiki Improvement Coordination

[sortie]

In this topic, we will be discussion particular issues with the osdev wiki and how to solve them. Nominate articles for deletion or a serious revision. Locate articles that should go into the Lovecraftian category. There's crazy, misleading, and wrong parts of the wiki. Let's get rid of them.

I suggest you use the random article feature. That'll bring you to the obscure corners of the wiki. See also the Wiki Wish List.

For information on how to edit the wiki, see http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=677.
For the manual of style, see http://wiki.osdev.org/OSDev_Wiki:Manual_Of_Style.

Let's hear some concrete suggestions for wiki improvement.

[glauxosdev]

I think this is a good idea. I will take a break from my OS to spend some time on the wiki.

As for the suggestions part, maybe wiki could be improved if all those wanted pages existed. Maybe we should provide trivial information for beginners, but also explain things more in depth? And even bolding/underlining important parts on pages could be helpful, maybe.

Waiting for your suggestions too.

Regards,
glauxosdev

[Roman]

I think, that we need pages about x2APIC and XNU (OS X kernel). I think I could take care about XNU, because I'm reading "Mac OS X and iOS Internals: To the Apple's Core" by Jonathan Levin.

[Brendan]

Hi,

Let's hear some concrete suggestions for wiki improvement.

For a start, this sounds like a good idea to me:

At Lowlevel, the quality of the questions was improved a lot after we had abandoned the old "copy this code" style tutorials for individual topics (actually, they are still around, but much less prominent) and guided people towards a new coherent series of good tutorials. "Good" means that they don't just offer code (they do, but usually it's incomplete so that you have to think a bit and can't just c&p), but explain what options you have, where to get information on each of them and how you can integrate the pieces best. In the first part, the provided code is rather complete, and as the series progresses, it becomes less and you have to fill in more by yourself using the links that are given. This way it didn't duplicate the topic-specific articles, but is more like a "guided tour" through the wiki.

Specifically, I like the idea of something that explains all the options, and branches off to "option specific" pages (which converge again as the reader progresses). For example:

Code: Select all

             Intro
               |
            Project Goals (e.g. knowing what yours is)
               |
            OS types
            /   |    \
  Monolithic  Micro  Exo-kernel
            \   |    /
       Languages/Toolchains
            /   |    \
     Assembly  GCC   CLANG
            \   |    /
            Boot loaders
              /    \
            GRUB   Roll your own
              \    /
           Memory Management
                .
                .
                .

I also agree with something iansjack said - we probably do need more links to official documentation (if/where possible); and some sort of explanation on how to obtain documentation if a direct link isn't possible (e.g. things like UEFI specs and ARM manuals that require you register and/or sign an "adoptors agreement" before you can download; and places like t13.org who won't give you official specifications for free but will let you download an "almost as good" draft).


Cheers,

Brendan

[KemyLand]

I'll touch some begginer-related pages. I won't change any already-proven-to-work algorithm, and I'll inform on this thread all changes I make, so they can be undone if necessary.

Edit:
BTW, did you saw on the wiki's Main Page at the bottom that...

This page was last modified on 16 December 2011, at 03:45.

Edit 2:
I suggest that some type of Wiki Formatting Codelines shall be created.

[ExeTwezz]

Edit 2:
I suggest that some type of Wiki Formatting Codelines shall be created.

If you mean writing wiki pages, then it already exists, see http://wiki.osdev.org/OSDev_Wiki:Manual_Of_Style.

[thepowersgang]

As a note of a set of articles that need a good prune/merge/rework - The ATA related ones, mostly because there's a lot of duplicated information there, and hints/important information spread around within the usless or repeated stuff.

[no92]

This needs some serious rework: Writing a memory manager.
Are these needed? Socket, Select, Message Passing Tutorial.
This should be moved into the main namespace and put at the best spot on the Extended Main Page: Naively Closed Source.

How about creating a temporary TODO wiki page in a user namespace for coordinating?

Let the discussion begin!

[Combuster]

I'll touch some begginer-related pages. I won't change any already-proven-to-work algorithm, and I'll inform on this thread all changes I make, so they can be undone if necessary.

Edit:
BTW, did you saw on the wiki's Main Page at the bottom that...

This page was last modified on 16 December 2011, at 03:45.

That page consists almost exclusively of templates, and after a few incidents with both vandals and people not understanding what that means, there's also protection on that page with the following message:

<!-- For your daily editing, go to http://wiki.osdev.org/Category:Main_Page_Templates - this page is locked mainly to prevent accidental breakage -->

Main Page itself is a redirect, so if you have a replacement main page ready, that redirect can be easily updated.

[sortie]

no92: See the http://wiki.osdev.org/Wish_List. I would prefer if coordination discussion happened here. I can edit the first post as needed. The article stubs on some POSIX system interfaces are okay, they can be expanded in the future. The select article documents an obsolescent interface, it should be replaced by an article about poll(2), and a generic article about power efficient waiting. I'm okay with moving Naively Closed Source into the main namespace, but I wrote it as a non-objective rant, which people might disagree heavily with. I'm a bit on the fence about putting that into the main namespace as generic advise.

thepowersgang: I agree the ATA articles needs work. I used them recently, I should work on them. I'd like for there to be more emphasis on the proper PCI & DMA approach rather than hard-coded IO ports & PIO. We also need an article on AHCI.

[glauxosdev]

And what about tutorials in the wiki? I think many of them are broken (such as "Real mode assembly I", to which I added org statement and stack setup). Maybe should we work on them?

Also, I think we could get divided into groups, each of them could be responsible for a domain. For example, Roman, I and two others could be responsible for "CPU Registers" (I created "CPU Registers x86" and Roman "CPU Registers x86-64", of course there are also other architectures). Another group could be responsible for something second, and another for something third etc. And moderators could moderate all the domains.

Regards,
glauxosdev

[robschia]

This should be moved into the main namespace and put at the best spot on the Extended Main Page: Naively Closed Source.

This would be a great thing! And it would also be nice to put a link for the #osdev IRC channel(although I have joined it only a couple of times myself).

I am a beginner, so I cannot contribute that much in writing new articles, but I can help edit, merge and fix the old ones. I'd also suggest to reskin at least the wiki, since it is the "entry point"( ) to the osdev world and the default one gives me that discouraging "old and abandoned site" feel. I can actually do it myself if you can help me with some information on how the wiki skin is structured.

[alexander]

Shouldn't Intel_Ethernet_i217 be added under the Network cards and communicating devices section on the Expanded_Main_Page?

[KemyLand]

Shouldn't Intel_Ethernet_i217 be added under the Network cards and communicating devices section on the Expanded_Main_Page?

Done

[Unsigned]

Hi. The asm goto code in the Interrupt Service Routines article is buggy, and I have better working code which handles not only correct interrupt acknowledge, but also compatibility with multitasking and handling exceptions which push an error code. But I think it would be better to create a separate page for that and substitute the original asm goto code with a little explanation and a link to the new page.
May I modify it?