coderwiki.com is starting and needs you!

[da404LewZer]

i'm starting a wiki on coding, keeping everything seperate. anyone who
wants to help check out the site. i want to document every function for
every language ever


www.coderwiki.com

 

[Richard Heathfield]

da404LewZer said:

i'm starting a wiki on coding, keeping everything seperate. anyone who
wants to help check out the site. i want to document every function for
every language ever


www.coderwiki.com

From "hello world" example:

"-where stdio.h is the name of library."

Er, no.

I suggest you fix what you've got before adding anything else.

 

[pete]

da404LewZer said:


From "hello world" example:

"-where stdio.h is the name of library."

Er, no.

I suggest you fix what you've got before adding anything else.

Now it says:
"-where stdio.h is the name of include file."

stdio.h is a "standard header".
Whether or not stdio.h exists as a file
in any particular implementation of C,
is unspecified by the C standard.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

pete said:

Now it says:
"-where stdio.h is the name of include file."

stdio.h is a "standard header".
Whether or not stdio.h exists as a file
in any particular implementation of C,
is unspecified by the C standard.

In other words, it suffers from the same problem that any wiki suffers from
- editing can be carried out by anyone, no matter how ignorant.

 

[Richard G. Riley]

pete said:


In other words, it suffers from the same problem that any wiki suffers from
- editing can be carried out by anyone, no matter how ignorant.

Or, in all fairness, how well informed. No different from any techy
newsgroup really where google will reveal all sorts of wrong answers,
misleading information and general rubbish : invariably bad data is unremovable
though - giving Wikis the edge when uptodate and well maintained.

Wikis are, in general, a good thing IMO. They are certainly gaining in
popularity.

Thats not to say, however, that I would support any pie in the sky idea
of documenting "every function ever" ...

 

[Default User]

pete said:

In other words, it suffers from the same problem that any wiki
suffers from - editing can be carried out by anyone, no matter how
ignorant.

I have to say that the page now has some suspiciously correct
information. I think some of the people here have been doing some work.



Brian

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Default User said:

I have to say that the page now has some suspiciously correct
information. I think some of the people here have been doing some work.

....which is fine as far as it goes, and very public-spirited, but are they
signing up to make corrections to it every day for the next N years? I
don't think so. So their good work is very likely either to be undone
completely or to be swamped by more dreck.

 

[Richard Bos]

Or, in all fairness, how well informed. No different from any techy
newsgroup really where google will reveal all sorts of wrong answers,
misleading information and general rubbish : invariably bad data is unremovable
though - giving Wikis the edge when uptodate and well maintained.

Wrong. On any techy newsgroup, when misinformation is published, one
will generally find a follow-up posted that corrects the bad
information, and that correction is just as unremovable as the original
rubbish. On a Wiki, when misinformation is posted, anyone can correct
that misinformation - and anyone else can, _and will_, re-uncorrect that
correction just as quickly.
On a newsgroup, the winner is the reader with the patience to read the
entire thread rather than the single post. On a Wiki, the winner is the
poster with the most patience to keep re-"correcting" this rubbish
poster who keeps asserting that void main() is bad C, and the patient
reader, no matter how patient, loses out.

Wikis are, in general, a good thing IMO. They are certainly gaining in
popularity.

Popularity means nothing. James Blunt is also gaining popularity, and
he's probably the worst example of nothingness to rise to the Top of the
Pops recently - and that's some accolade given the existence of Girls
Disallowed.

The mere existence of Wikis is, in general, a good thing. _Relying_ on a
Wiki, for anything, but especially for correctness, is quite egregiously
unwise.

Richard

 

[Richard G. Riley]

Wrong. On any techy newsgroup, when misinformation is published, one
will generally find a follow-up posted that corrects the bad
information, and that correction is just as unremovable as the
original

Not wrong at all. There might well be corrections and followups but the
original bad info/posts tends to stay there. Surely you dont refute that?

rubbish. On a Wiki, when misinformation is posted, anyone can correct
that misinformation - and anyone else can, _and will_, re-uncorrect that
correction just as quickly.

If they have malice aforethough this could be a problem. See the Beorge
Bush wiki for an example.

On a newsgroup, the winner is the reader with the patience to read the
entire thread rather than the single post. On a Wiki, the winner is
the

Some can be somewhat long and winding :-;

poster with the most patience to keep re-"correcting" this rubbish
poster who keeps asserting that void main() is bad C, and the patient
reader, no matter how patient, loses out.


Popularity means nothing. James Blunt is also gaining popularity, and

Popularity often means that people find a use for them : and in techy
areas its not really the equivalent of "oh, hes gorgeous" ...

he's probably the worst example of nothingness to rise to the Top of the
Pops recently - and that's some accolade given the existence of Girls
Disallowed.

The mere existence of Wikis is, in general, a good thing. _Relying_ on a
Wiki, for anything, but especially for correctness, is quite egregiously
unwise.

I would nearly always cross check a wiki. But it is fast and convenient
and I think you are being a little too distrustful. Certainly with
setting up some Linux systems recently they were invaluable whereas
usenet was a hotchpotch of coflicting threads that invariably ended up
in slanging matches.

A wiki might have errors, it is usually concise enough that finding the
errors doesnt take long. This is not the case with millions of usenet
threads : there is invariably NOT a summary post hiliting who was wrong
and who was right.

A wiki certainly is not a replacement for usenet discussions.

Richard

--

 

[Chris Dollin]

i'm starting a wiki on coding, keeping everything seperate. anyone who
wants to help check out the site. i want to document every function for
every language ever.

There's an infinite number of them. What's your budget?

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Richard G. Riley said:

(e-mail address removed) (Richard Bos) writes:



If they have malice aforethough this could be a problem. See the Beorge
Bush wiki for an example.

It doesn't need to be malice, Richard. Richard is quite correct - the
overall trend for Wiki technical articles is in the direction of increasing
inaccuracy. This is certainly true in my own experience of Wikis. Both on
wikipedia and the clc wiki, I've spotted errors which I've corrected
(correctly!), but my corrections were edited until the articles were once
again incorrect.

In fairness to the clc wiki, I should add that that particular "correction"
was eventually put right again - but the more people involved, the less
likely that becomes.

 

[pemo]

Now it says:
"-where stdio.h is the name of include file."

stdio.h is a "standard header".
Whether or not stdio.h exists as a file
in any particular implementation of C,
is unspecified by the C standard.

Yet there are around 100 references to it in the C99 standard.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

pemo said:

Yet there are around 100 references to it in the C99 standard.

I can find plenty of references to the <stdio.h> header, but not even a
single reference to a <stdio.h> "file". Please enlighten me.

 

[pemo]

pemo said:


I can find plenty of references to the <stdio.h> header, but not even
a single reference to a <stdio.h> "file". Please enlighten me.

Ahhh - I see!

 

[pemo]

pete said:


In other words, it suffers from the same problem that any wiki
suffers from - editing can be carried out by anyone, no matter how
ignorant.

Or malicious - I note that most of the content has now been deleted.

 

[Richard Bos]

Not wrong at all. There might well be corrections and followups but the
original bad info/posts tends to stay there. Surely you dont refute that?

No; what I refute is the conclusion you draw from that, which is that
this makes Wikis better than newsgroups. IMO, it makes them worse.

If they have malice aforethough this could be a problem.

_Everybody_ can edit a Wiki. That means that sooner or later you _will_
have malice aforethought. There may be 90% good will out there, but
there only needs to be a single troll to render a Wiki unreliable.

Some can be somewhat long and winding :-;

If you can't be arsed to take some trouble to find reliable information,
that's your problem, not mine or Usenet's.

I would nearly always cross check a wiki. But it is fast and convenient
and I think you are being a little too distrustful.

I have seen too many reasons to trust them.

Richard

 

[Richard Heathfield]

pemo said:

Or malicious - I note that most of the content has now been deleted.

Not according to my browser.

Incidentally, the "Hello World" page /still/ contains this text:

"Standard input and output functions are prototyped [declared] in an
'include file'"

which is wrong. I also noticed this:

"For example, there are standard functions for reading data, and outputting
the same to the screen/terminal."

which is simply false.

 

[pemo]

pemo said:

Or malicious - I note that most of the content has now been deleted.

Not according to my browser.

Incidentally, the "Hello World" page /still/ contains this text:

"Standard input and output functions are prototyped [declared] in an
'include file'"

which is wrong. I also noticed this:

What, the use of 'file'?

"For example, there are standard functions for reading data, and
outputting the same to the screen/terminal."

which is simply false.

How so? Aren't printf and scanf /standard library functions/?

Anyway, why are you telling me Richard?

 

[Richard Heathfield]

pemo said:

Incidentally, the "Hello World" page /still/ contains this text:

"Standard input and output functions are prototyped [declared] in an
'include file'"

which is wrong. I also noticed this:

What, the use of 'file'?

Yes. It's not an "include file"; it's a standard header.

How so? Aren't printf and scanf /standard library functions/?

Sure they are. But printf doesn't output to the screen or terminal. It
writes its data on the standard output stream. What happens to it after
that is Not Its Problem. Yes, it /might/ end up on a screen or terminal,
but it might not. C has no control over this.

Anyway, why are you telling me Richard?

I'm telling comp.lang.c, to which you happen to be a subscriber. If I want
exclusively to tell /you/ something, I'll be sure to drop you an email.

 

[Richard Tobin]

Richard G. Riley said:

It doesn't need to be malice, Richard. Richard is quite correct - the
overall trend for Wiki technical articles is in the direction of increasing
inaccuracy.

Of course Richard, Richard, and Richard, not all Wikis are publicly
editable.

-- Richard