OSDev.org

If you ever looked deeper into the wiki, especially the special pages, you will have noticed a lot of stubs and irrelevant pages. Looking into these things, I've wrote up a list of things I'd propose doing, so that if there are any objections to these changes affecting multiple pages, they can be voiced beforehand.

Up for complete deletion:
- Sol asm (relevance, self-promotion?)
- fat_imgen (relevance)
- AS86 (relevance)
- BFI (relevance)
- TLink (relevance)
- WLink (relevance)
- SimNow (relevance)
- SciTE (relevance)
- LCC (relevance)
- JWasm (relevance)

Note: I'd be fine to keep these if they had any valuable information attached - e.g. issues and remedies.

Nasty stuff, moving to the appropriate user namespaces:
- Gravaera redirects (Gravaera/UDI_Regions and Gravaera/UDI_Regions; Note to self: use the "What links here" tool in the wiki when deleting these)
- JohnBurger pages: Move them to his own namespace. This is ridiculous, honestly.

Opinions? Objections? Additions?

the problem generally is the wiki is too x86, and too kernel-orientated.
the wiki should be separated into architectures, within, practical examples and theocretical descriptions, and other topics must be covered more efficiently
just shoveling random articles together is not good

I'd argue, as author of the entry, that SimNow is a useful addition to the toolset.

@Geri
A couple of objections to your post - apart from having exactly nothing to do with the topic. The wiki is a place to get a overview about a subject - it is not (nor is it supposed to be) a definitive guide to your own OS, with no assembly required (unintended, albeit good pun).

Then, by all means necessary, go ahead and fix it - everyone has permission to edit. The matter of the fact is that few are really interested in anything but x86 - the wiki is just reflective of that. This is the spirit of the thread - but thanks for hijacking with the very first reply.

tl;dr: If you want to flame about x86, please open another thread.

i wasnt intended to, just these were my ideas about the wiki, as you asked for it

iansjack wrote:I'd argue, as author of the entry, that SimNow is a useful addition to the toolset.

I agree, I also use it from time to time and have found quite a few bugs in my code that did not show up in any other simulator. About the other tools, I cannot say much, maybe someone still uses them. I used Watcom when I started OS development because it has a few nice features I used (such as hand-crafting register calling conventions), also it supports 16 bit code and segmented memory model.

Alright, I've deleted Gravaera's unused redirects and I am in the process of moving JohnBurger's stuff into his namespace. Also, I've removed SimNow from my up-for-deletion list, but still consider all others for deletion - at a later date.

Suggestion: Move the SimNow content to a "Kernel-level debuggers"/"ISA-level debuggers" page (where other people can add content about e.g. bochs and qemus debuggers) and remove all others (or move them to some "considered for deletion" namespace first.

The second part is something I was thinking about - a template that marks the article as suggested for deletion, maybe even adds a category?

Speaking of clutter, would it be a good idea to add descriptions of various pieces of real hardware to the Wiki?

I've recently been making drivers for several things, like Via Rhine network card, Trident graphics card, M-systems DiskOnChip and similar bits of old and scarcely documented hardware, and i was thinking about putting info about them into the Wiki here, with good write-up hopefully.

Would something like that belong, or is there some better place for it?

YES PLEASE.

Practical experience with hardware definitely belongs on the wiki. Documentation links can be hard to find, and with many devices you just get register dumps (with no information on how to actually set up a functioning environment).

The wiki is very much for documenting these hidden parts.