Re: [coreboot] Easier accessibility for coreboot/flashrom wikipedias? What do you think?

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Fri, 19 May 2017 11:20:27 +0300
qma ster  wrote:
> Dear coreboot/flashrom mailing list members,

Hi,
> As you may have noticed it is not that easy or straightforward to
> gain the edit rights for coreboot/flashrom wikipedias so the people
> are mass migrating to the unofficial wikis.

Having already an account, I cound't notice it.
Having good quality and extensive documentation is really important, so
fixing that is important.
> My proposal is to give the edit rights to all the subscribers of the
> coreboot/flashrom mailing lists, or at least to all those who have
> been the subscribers for at least a day / a week / or a month.

Having a human review the subscription would probably be a better
idea, if done correctly:
- Humans could review if the request seems legit.
- The subscribers could have that human as a reference, to ask questions
  if needed.
- The reviewers could help the subscriber if they whish.
However to work correctly:
- The review process would need to be fast for both the reviewer and the
  subscriber. An idea would not to have to go trough something that
  looks like a job interview, as it was mentioned, but rather explain
  why the subscriber wants wiki access. It should then be explained
  what kind of description is expected.
- It would be nice if a welcome page is created on the user account
  space, like on wikipedia. This would permit to refer to some general
  guidelines for the wikis. For instance, some of my edits on the
  flashrom wiki were reverted or moved to my user page, because I
  didn't properly understand what level of anti-bricking safety was
  required[1].
  There are also lot of tutorials on the Internet which uses improper
  voltages (like 5V instead of 3.3V) for the flash chip, and as I was
  told, it accidentally works probably because the wire setup is so bad
  that the voltage drops on the wires, due to the resistance.
  Good guidelines/explanation pages would probably be sufficent to
  avoid such issues in the flashrom wiki.

References:
-----------
[1] I explained how to reflash the option rom of an old nvidia GPU by
    explaining how to bypass the read-only safety in flashrom, and
    making several writes attempt to flash the (sgabios) image.
    Since the method used always succedded for me, I thought that it
    was fine at the time of writing.

Denis.