[pmwiki-users] RFC: PITS 00701 -- WikiFarm confusion

[Neil Herber]

At 2006-03-15  07:43 AM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
>FWIW, I did a little bit of searching yesterday to see what other
>packages use as an equivalent to our "wikifarm" term, but didn't
>find anything.

I am not sure that changing the words will make it any easier to 
understand PmWiki farming, so I propose that we retain the current 
terms, but use them more precisely (as I described in an earlier 
email). This will require some editing on the doc pages that relate 
to farming, but no code changes or rethinking the analogies. In 
particular, it won't require changing or otherwise explaining the $Farm prefix.

Not that http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWikiPhilosophy has the 
principles ranked, but it is interesting to note that favoring 
writers (who need to know absolutely nothing about farming) is #1, 
while easy installation is #5.

Any of the other terms that spring to mind (or have been suggested so 
far) have their own baggage that they drag along: master/slaves, 
mother/daughters, father/sons, webs, and so on.

If no-one has any strong objections, I will put these definitions at 
the top of the WikiFarms page:
* A farm (or wiki farm) is a collection of two or more wiki fields 
that use one copy of the PmWiki code.
* A field is a single wiki with a unique URL. Each field lives in its 
own directory.
* The "home field" is where most of the PmWiki code (particularly 
pmwiki.php) lives.

I don't think there needs to be a "formal" name for "farm admins" and 
"field admins"  (I found that these terms used up valuable brain 
cells to no great advantage). There are just admins, and one or more 
may have access to the home field which can affect the entire farm.



Neil

Neil Herber
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