Latest revision as of 01:16, 3 September 2023

This outlines the issues with the current nixos.wiki deployment and organization.

A note to the reader

If you have any feedback, please visit the discussion page.

Read this if you are involved in nixos.wiki

Thanks for being here and making this Wiki something we all hope continues to succeed. Please have an open mind as we discuss the problems. Then we can explore how to solve them.

If we want to continue our success, we should explore ways to reduce the risk for failure.

Be respectful

This discussion is possibly polarizing because nobody wants to feel like they've done stuff wrong. We all make mistakes every day, please keep that in mind when participating in this discussion. There should be no names in this discussion. Only problems and possible resolutions.

Intended outcomes

There are also possible outcomes which I will outline first:

This wiki remains neglected and full of risks to the NixOS project. There remains many people interested in starting a more official wiki. We could make this happen!
OR: The server admin finds some time to follow up, comes up with a plan to help alleviate these concerns. This plan might include onboarding more server admins, to reduce the sole server admin's burden.

I hope for option 2.

Risks

Technical Risks

Security, software compatibility, maintainability, and reliability risks.

This MediaWiki install is vulnerable to many CVEs. See this list on cvedetails.com. 1.29.0 was released April 2017. It was EOL late 2018 because it was not a long term support (LTS) release that are intended for production. (See MW:Version lifecycle)
The rest of the stack is also EOL:
- PHP 7.3.23 is EOL and has unpatched vulns too. [1]
- ICU has CVEs too [2]
TODO rebuild the research that demonstrates this isn't even a NixOS install because the versions above don't match up with NixOS releases. At some point we established this is likely debian buster (oldstable).
- if it's debian oldstable, please note LTS supported Debian releases aren't really a secure OS choice. It's just folks like you and me making security updates when it is convenient. There is no debian security team support for LTS.
There is no documentation of how this server is backed up, or if a restore was ever attempted. This means if anything happens to the infrastructure, this wiki will be could be very difficult to near impossible to restore (esp with EOL software dependencies).

Usability Risks

Risks to users making best the use of this website.

When the user clicks "Save page" the POST request often hangs for 30+ seconds. This website appears to have Cloudflare analytics, so one with access will likely see high bounce rates after one visits the edit page. This is going to be users who lost patience with waiting for edits to go through, or other UX issues.
There are likely some usability/flow related issues that could be detected if somebody could review the Cloudflare analytics on a routine basis.
- Example, I've been using this wiki for about a year now, only now did I learn *much* of the discussion about this wiki happens not on this wiki, but on GitHub at nix-community/wiki.

Sustainability Risks

Risks to the long term success of this project.

There do not appear to be any active server admins. To ensure continuity there should be at least two active server admins. I believe there are many users out there who are interested in helping, if shown an opportunity.
- As a result, the server and infra doesn't seem maintained.
There does not appear to be a way for the reader to support this website short of contributing themselves. What if this website collected donations for hosting and published transparency reports? That could eliminate most costs, could even pay for all the admin's time, depending on how effective campaigns are.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 = A note to the reader =
+If you have any feedback, please visit the [[User_talk:Winny/WikiRisks|discussion page]].
 == Read this if you are involved in nixos.wiki ==
@@ Line 18: / Line 20: @@
 # This wiki remains neglected and full of risks to the NixOS project.  There remains many people interested in starting a more official wiki.  We could make this happen!
-# ''OR:'' The admin finds some time to follow up, comes up with a plan to help alleviate these concerns.  This plan might include onboarding more admins, to reduce the sole admin's burden.
+# ''OR:'' The ''server admin'' finds some time to follow up, comes up with a plan to help alleviate these concerns.  This plan might include onboarding more server admins, to reduce the sole server admin's burden.
@@ Line 49: / Line 51: @@
 Risks to the long term success of this project.
-* There do not appear to be any active server admins.  To ensure continuity there should be at least two active admins.  I believe there are many users out there who are interested in helping, if shown an opportunity.
+* There do not appear to be any active server admins.  To ensure continuity there should be at least two active server admins.  I believe there are many users out there who are interested in helping, if shown an opportunity.
 ** As a result, the server and infra doesn't seem maintained.
-* There does not appear to be a way for the reader to support this website short of contributing themselves.  What if this website collected donations for hosting and published transparency reports?  That could eliminate most costs, could even pay for the admin time, depending on how effective campaigns are.
+* There does not appear to be a way for the reader to support this website short of contributing themselves.  What if this website collected donations for hosting and published transparency reports?  That could eliminate most costs, could even pay for all the admin's time, depending on how effective campaigns are.