[developers] Infrastructure updates

[Olga Zamaraeva]

Dear Developers,

Alexandre and I met a couple of weeks ago to continue the discussion on
updating the current DELPH-IN infrastructure (started by Stephan earlier).

Below are the notes from our meeting. Any comments welcome!

DELPH-IN Infrastructure meeting

December 29, 2020, 10--11 am Pacific Time

Present: Alexandre Rademaker, Olga Zamaraeva


*Platforms:* We briefly discussed various platforms, but since we both
agree that GitHub is a competitive solution, we focused mostly on
discussing GitHub. Another possibility mentioned by Emily M. Bender via
email is MediaWiki. Alexandre points out that MediaWiki is more challenging
to serialize in a standard format, which is very important for posterity.

In the end, the top priority is to have a solution that adopts open and
standard formats and the use of cloud-based systems where we do not have to
deal with low-level issues like hardware issues, OS maintenance,
packages/libraries updates, etc.

Considering the use of the GitHub infrastructure, we still have two
alternatives to evaluate:


   1.

   An off-the-shelf wiki in a particular repository, e.g., doc, under the
   https://github.com/delph-in/ organization.
   2.

   A static site generated website hosted by http://pages.github.com
   service, possible using the address http://delph-in.github.io. Many
   tools, such as http://jekyllrb.com, can produce static sites. They are
   easy to maintain, and we can facilitate contributions using the online
   GitHub file editor and an automatically building script. See the header of
   the Universal Dependencies pages, such as
   https://universaldependencies.org/guidelines.html.


So far, our impression is that a static site generated website may be
better for maintenance/posterity! But a wiki solution is more comfortable
to start with.

*Features/Desiderata:*


   1.

   Notifying about recent changes
   2.

   Having each entry as a page/file
   3.

   Linking to other pages within the same wiki
   4.

   Seeing which pages are linked to the given page (reverse links)
   5.

   Linking to things outside the wiki
   6.

   Search
   7.

   Access to/ease of editing/contributing
   8.

   Access to different versions of a page
   9.

   Deleted pages: what should be known/done about those?
   10.

   Rigid vs. flat/free/absent organization
   11.

   creating groups with privileges (MoinMoin unique feature called ACL)


More we can learn from other experiences:
https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/WikiMigration

*Issues:*

   1.

   Is it possible to assume some people will serve as admins? E.g., to
   approve changes or modify wiki structure.
   2.

   How to deal with the pages of our current wiki with ACL restrictions?
   3.

   Attached materials such as pdfs, videos, etc.? How to better host them?
   4.

   What is the ideal balance between 'easy to use tools' vs. its 'careless
   content creation' consequence?


-- 
Olga Zamaraeva
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