Install-instructions on the wiki RFC

Problem: A lot of people are finding and using other install instructions than the ones that come with Koha in the INSTALL.* files (and are QA'ed etc) - either on the wiki or on websites external to the Koha project.

Aim: Make it easier for people to find the official install instructions.

Proposal 1

• Copy the official install instructions to the wiki and link to the originals on git
  • Someone should be responsible for keeping them uptodate - User:Magnus might volunteer for that (and it might be automated with a small script)
  • Make them read-only (for non-admins, or similar)
  • Mark them clearly as "official"
• Mark all other install instructions on the wiki as "un-official" and link to the official ones
• Think about how we can make these pages more visible in search engines

Explain clearly how to get updates into the INSTALL.* files. We might want to have a separate page for each instruction that is open to editing, as a kind of draft version (and clearly marked as such), and a process for getting changes from those pages into the INSTALL.* files - with quality control.

Proposal 2

• Replace all install instructions on the wiki with links/embeds/redirects to the ones on http://git.koha-community.org HEAD

Reasoning: the INSTALL.* files must remain the official source because they are downloaded with every copy of Koha. Moving the official installation instructions to the wiki is not viable because it would cause severe inconvenience to any installers without live internet access at installation time and leave them vulnerable to any network service problems.

Comment: The original proposal says nothing about moving the INSTALL.* instructions to the wiki, just copying, to make them more visible. ;-) --Magnus 02:31, 11 January 2012 (EST)

Rebuttal: Then the proposal seems a bit null because most of the INSTALL.* instructions have been copied to or from the wiki at some point. Copying the rest would introduce more duplicate content which may get stale. Copying in order to manipulate search engine visibility (as proposed above) is allegedly penalised (see Google Webmaster Tools: Duplicate Content), so it could actually reduce its visibility. We should reuse work and not copy-paste it. If we want to improve its visibility, we should link to it more. The wiki should link to it and not copy-paste it. -- Mjr.towers.org.uk 13:15, 14 January 2012 (EST)