[tor-bugs] #34437 [Internal Services/Service - trac]: migrate help.tpo into a gitlab wiki

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#34437: migrate help.tpo into a gitlab wiki
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 Reporter:  anarcat                           |          Owner:  qbi
     Type:  task                              |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Low                               |      Milestone:
Component:  Internal Services/Service - trac  |        Version:
 Severity:  Minor                             |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tpa-roadmap-june                  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                    |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                    |        Sponsor:
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Description changed by anarcat:

Old description:

> we are currently using ikiwiki to host our documentation. that has served
> us well so far: it's available as a static site in the static mirror
> system and allows all sysadmins to have a static, offsite copy of the
> documentation when everything is down.
>
> but ikiwiki is showing its age. it's an old program written in Perl,
> difficult to theme and not very welcoming to new users. for example, it's
> impossible for a user unfamiliar with git to contribute to the
> documentation.
>
> gitlab wikis, in contrast, have a web interface to edit pages. it doesn't
> have the macros ikiwiki has, but that's nothing a few commandline hacks
> can't fix... or at least we should consider it.
>
> this is not blocking the trac to gitlab migration, but it would be nice
> to jump onboard with everyone, since we will be migrating the Trac wiki
> onto gitlab as well...

New description:

 we are currently using ikiwiki to host our documentation. that has served
 us well so far: it's available as a static site in the static mirror
 system and allows all sysadmins to have a static, offsite copy of the
 documentation when everything is down.

 but ikiwiki is showing its age. it's an old program written in Perl,
 difficult to theme and not very welcoming to new users. for example, it's
 impossible for a user unfamiliar with git to contribute to the
 documentation. it also has its own unique Markdown dialect that is not
 used anywhere else. and while Markdown itself is not standardized and has
 lots of such dialects, there is /some/ convergence around CommonMark and
 GFM (GitHub's markdown) as de-facto standards at least, which ikiwiki
 still has to catchup with. it also has powerful macros which are nice to
 make complex websites, but do not render in the offline documentation,
 making us dependent on the rendered copy (as opposed to setting up client-
 side tools to peruse the documentation).

 gitlab wikis, in contrast, have a web interface to edit pages. it doesn't
 have the macros ikiwiki has, but that's nothing a few commandline hacks
 can't fix... or at least we should consider it. they don't have macros or
 any more powerful features that ikiwiki has, but maybe that's exactly what
 we want.

 this is not blocking the trac to gitlab migration, but it would be nice to
 jump onboard with everyone, since we will be migrating the Trac wiki onto
 gitlab as well...

--

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/34437#comment:3>
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