Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?

>
> On Feb 5, 2008, at 11:02 PM, Guy Rouillier wrote:
>
>> Greg Smith wrote:
>>> On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Dave Page wrote:
>>>> We intentionally have not done that as we wanted to ensure that all
>>>> documentation published under postgresql.org was appropriately
>>>> moderated first.
>>> OK, so hosting a probably inaccurate in many ways (at first)
>>> community documentation project wiki is inappropriate for a
>>> postgresql.org page; completely understandable. That "moderated
>>> first" thing is part of the problem with using Techdocs I already
>>> mentioned.
>>> Can anyone think of another place a community docs wiki could go at?
>>
>> I definitely think it should go on the official PostgreSQL site
>> somewhere - that's where the community is. The documentation page
>> already lists versions of the official docs "with comments". Isn't
>> this an expansion of that? Anyone with a community account is
>> free to post a comment.
>>
>> If all those comments are moderated, then I'd suggest either adding
>> a "Community Version" directly on that page, or adding one to the
>> community page off of Techdocs.
>
> Something along those lines has already been suggested and the
> problem there is that comments in the reference manual are not the
> appropriate place for howtos, beginner's tutorials and the like. A
> public wiki, possibly with a couple volunteer editors to make sure
> that nothing blatantly wrong stays up for long, pretty much exactly
> fits the bill. I, for one, don't want to see the manual turn into
> something like the php manual in that the manual should have nothing
> but the facts without any chance of misinformation being included there.
>
> Erik Jones
>

+5
The manual should be a a reference document, that contains the dry facts
of PostgreSQL, like what syntax is allowed, which functions exist etc.
The Wiki should focus on how to use PgSQL in the real world.

I'm a regular on a dutch website called PHPFreakz and we use our wiki as a
real-world-reference document. People ask questions on a forum and the
most interesting, recurring or just plain interesting ones are enterd into
the wiki, very much like Varlena's tidbits. Moderators keep an eye on what
comes in and organize the information into categories. That kind of
information is pure gold. We add a few read-along adventures every now and
then and that works extremely well to educate people.

PgSQL could use a wiki to gather information, and when a document seems
complete, it could be checked by moderators and copied to the official
website.