It probably just never worked out that way. Usually everyone starts with documenting the distro-specific parts first, and then adds more and more, until even general parts are there. But at the same time, everyone probably thinks that those general parts are supposed in the specific projects' documentation, so nobody really cares about sharing. Until the point is reached that some wiki is so big and successful, that it just silently took over the whole domain.
Also, the whole sharing somehow seems to have died off over the decades. 25+ years ago, when wiki was new and shiny and everyone was experimental and motivated, there were strong movements for interwiki-content, sharing stuff between them openly. Then time happened, not much sharing was done, and every wiki-software slowly moved on, doing their own thing, becoming some semi-open silo or even a closed garden.
And today we had this same movement arising in the knowledge management-community, around their tools, and mainly in the context of Markdown, and it also kinda died down and never turned into anything substantial. Maybe, in the end, sharing information and knowledge is a bit harder to execute than it seems?
I think the sharing is easy. The maintaining is hard when there isn't clear ownership. How do the teams divide maintenance duties? How are vandalism and moderation dealt with across teams? How do disagreements between teams over style and quality dealt with? Cost of hosting split?
All of these are possible to answer, but they are also much easier to deal with when you're not sharing between different organizations.
The hard part about sharing is the different syntax of wikis, which could be slightly different even in the same wiki-software. Then there is the organization-part, and the sync-process itself.
Of course, today, 25 years later, we do have better solutions and much more experience for those problems.
> The maintaining is hard when there isn't clear ownership. How do the teams divide maintenance duties? How are vandalism and moderation dealt with across teams?
I would think those are pretty simply, as they all follow the same rules. I mean, handling vandalism isn't much different between Arch or Debian, it's always the same. And moderation really depends on the chosen sharing-mechanism. Which brings up again the hard part, just on a different level.
I think it's more of, let's say, unify the 2 wikis in one, what team should moderate Debian's or Arch's, and which rules should be applied Debian's or Arch's?
"Maybe, in the end, sharing information and knowledge is a bit harder to execute than it seems?"
Or ... instead of admitting something, we can also just find a scapegoat instead. Let's say bad coorporations somehow prevented it?
On the other hand, sharing information is easy.
The hard part is in trusting that information in the time and age of spam, propaganda and advertisers. And companies are quite secretive and don't want to share too much by default for other reasons.
Also it is way easier just do something to your own wiki, than coordinate with dozens of others where you share something.
I have many vague and some concrete ideas since a while about building trust right into the wiki system somehow, but never got around to actually implement something. Because ah well, I have to admit. It really ain't trivial after all, solving human trust.
> Let's say bad coorporations somehow prevented it?
How?
> On the other hand, sharing information is easy.
Not in the way we are talking about.
> The hard part is in trusting that information in the time and age of spam
No, it's not. We're talking here about moderated Knowledge bases. Of course, if it's a poor or even unmoderated wiki, this would be a problem. But I've never got the impression that Arch-wiki had this problem.
> don't want to share too much by default for other reasons.
Sharing what? This is about open source? Is this AI-slope? O_o
> Also it is way easier just do something to your own wiki, than coordinate with dozens of others where you share something.
Wikis work in a open way, if they are niche, to not attract trolls or spam too much, otherwise they work by restricting guest rights, banning ip, etc.
Usually pragmatically.
"No, it's not. We're talking here about moderated Knowledge bases. Of course, if it's a poor or even unmoderated wiki, this would be a problem. But I've never got the impression that Arch-wiki had this problem."
And arch wiki (and wikipedia itself) is a outlier, not the average wiki, that usually is outdated or plain wrong with no one caring.
Also, the whole sharing somehow seems to have died off over the decades. 25+ years ago, when wiki was new and shiny and everyone was experimental and motivated, there were strong movements for interwiki-content, sharing stuff between them openly. Then time happened, not much sharing was done, and every wiki-software slowly moved on, doing their own thing, becoming some semi-open silo or even a closed garden.
And today we had this same movement arising in the knowledge management-community, around their tools, and mainly in the context of Markdown, and it also kinda died down and never turned into anything substantial. Maybe, in the end, sharing information and knowledge is a bit harder to execute than it seems?