[haiku-web] Re: Making guides and essential information easily accessible

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Urias McCullough said on Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:09:00 -0800
>> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Jorge G. Mare <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > With regards to the desire to use a wiki instead, it is possible to
>> > add
>> > to this system the ability to use medwiki formatting tags, and
>> > still
>> > enjoy the flexbility of HTML/CSS where needed, together with the
>> > added
>> > functions that Drupal provides. So the wiki thing is a possibility
>> > that
>> > can be addressed.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> > On a broader perspetive, the Documents section of the website has
>> > become
>> > too scattered IMO, filled with a lot of unmaintained documents many
>> > of
>> > which are out of date. I think this is due in great part to the
>> > approach of having individually submitted and owned articles, which
>> > relies on a single individual, thus becoming prone to resulting in
>> > abandonment.
>>
>> Which is exactly why I recommend a wiki... supporting wiki tags isn't
>> good enough, we need a place where ANYONE can contribute at any time
>> and easily add/split pages if required.
>
> And all that is perfectly doable in Drupal, and much more way beyond of
> what wiki offer. That being said, I am not trying to push Drupal on
> anyone. If you guys feel something different is better, that's totally
> fine with me.
>
> My focus for now is to finish the site to enable the tranlation of the
> user guide. If eventually the system is deemed suited for other docs,
> that's good; if not, that's fine too. :)
>
> The other observation that I made with regards to the Haiku docs can be
> summarized by this thought: IMO, the status of our documentation is a
> manifestation of the approach of individually submitted/owned/
> maintained that we have used; it may be worth trying collectively
> maintained docs, so that all the burden does not fall on a single
> individual. That's all I wanted to say. :)

Yes, I fundamentally agree that this is a large part of the problem.
"Locking" the content away in a nicely-written guide, tutorial, or
blog post authored and/or edited by a single person seems to render
that content virtually unmaintable by others. It quickly becomes stale
at that point, and someone will often re-hash it in their own guide
published somewhere entirely different. Basically, what we end up with
is "forked" documentation because there's no central location where
everyone can submit their contributions as needed. Look at the number
of comments on some of the existing guides for example - questions,
answers, clarifications, etc. Those belong *in* the guide, not in
response to it :)

With that said, if Drupal ultimately provides much the same
collaborative documentation environment - it would probably suffice. I
suspect that I tend to be attracted to simpler solutions, which
probably is why I have not warmed up to the suggestion quite yet ;)

Please excuse my grumpiness - part of my frustration is that *I*
haven't done anything about this problem except complain.

- Urias
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