[haiku-web] Re: Community Documentation Collaboration (Was: Add Comunity Project)
- From: "Jorge G. Mare" <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-web@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:55:20 -0700
Howdy,
Urias McCullough wrote:
> Funny, I don't seem to recall very many people raising those concerns
> publicly at the time... in fact, at that time, I seem to recall very
> stale website content - and several people were collecting information
> provided in the forums, and found elsewhere and gathering it on the
> wiki so that there was a central location of collaborative and updated
> content.
>
> In fact there were a couple very active contributors to that wiki who
> were trying to provide information that otherwise wasn't being
> provided by anyone else at the time ;)
>
> I honestly don't recall very many developers contributing to the wiki
> at that time (or even the website for that matter), it seems like only
> community members were using it.
>
> Frankly, I have always believed it was taken down because it simply
> was disliked. If the content on the wiki was in question, it certainly
> could have been changed very easily by anyone who felt it was wrong.
> Deleting the entire system simply because it was perceived as having
> some bad information in it seems pretty harsh IMO. Our current Drupal
> site is littered with inaccurate content, in the form of tutorials,
> forum posts, comments on blog posts, etc. If you're suggesting that it
> has now been distilled down to only the best quality content, is
> accurate, and has no duplication of info, I think you're mistaken.
>
I am not saying that the wiki did not have any useful info; but it was
plagued with a lot of duplication, "fanboistic" content (some of the
assertions were quite laughable), and opinionated (rather than factual)
statements. With all due respect, and I know every contributor had the
best of intentions, but this did not put Haiku in a good light, nor did
it help make a compelling case for the project.
That being said, if you think about the wiki in the context of the days
when the Haiku website did not give anyone but a few the ability to
add/contribute content, it was understandable that it existed. But when
the Drupal website brought along the ability to submit and edit content,
it was not necessary anymore. That was more or less the reasoning for
dropping it.
There was the intention of cleaning up the wiki (basically, make it
documentation centric), so that the useful content could be migrated to
Drupal; that this never happened was, in hindsight, a mistake that we made.
> However, the gist of your post really seems to say: "When you allow
> everyone to edit the content, your content may turn to rubbish". I
> think we can agree that this concern is mostly unrelated to the use of
> any specific software (which you did state).
>
> If that's the general opinion, then it doesn't matter what software
> solution we choose, they'll all fail. But I don't believe it has to be
> that way, ease of moderation/review can make all the difference.
>
We agree that unfettered permissions would be detrimental regardless of
the system you used, but a least to me that reinforces my view that
switching to a wiki would do no good and that the effort would not be
worthwhile.
The thing is, we have a tool that we can tweak and improve as needed.
The proposal that I made a couple of days ago here...
//www.freelists.org/post/haiku-web/Fwd-General-Add-Comunity-Project,3
...to add the the diff module and tweak permissions would allow trusted
people to edit content with safeguards to revert content. How about we
try that first? :) (I would do it if I had access to the website server,
but I don't.)
> Instead, what we have now is a couple dozen websites/blogs where
> people are posting their own content in whatever format they like
> because they have no other outlet for that information. That would
> normally be fine, except many times the information I find is
> inaccurate or misleading - often because they either copied someone
> else's inaccurate information, or some process has changed since the
> content was written rendering it no longer accurate.
>
I would like to have a single place with all the accurate and up-to-date
information about Haiku as much as you do. But this is open source, and
you cannot force people to do one way or another. No matter what you do,
there will always be those who prefer to do their thing, and that's a
natural part of the ecosystem. I think you just gotta learn to live with
that. :)
> Anyhow, I suppose I'm really just dreaming at this point - even if we
> set something up, as you said, people still must contribute to it. It
> doesn't matter what software solution we choose. But I strongly
> suggest we keep it "separate" from the main website - inter-mingling
> of community-generated content and news articles or developer blog
> posts for example could become very very messy.
>
> The page that started this discussion, containing the community links
> on it, on the other hand, would be a perfect candidate for something
> that is community-maintained (and moderated).
>
The Editor role is exactly for that purpose; so if you want to give
someone the ability to such edit pages, just assign him/her the Editor
role, and you got what you wanted. :)
> Anyhow, let's definitely improve the website - get it updated to
> Drupal 6 (or 7) and worry about this whole shebang once we've leveled
> things out a bit more.
>
> In the meantime, I recommend we start tagging the current website
> content that needs to be updated or consolidated so that those who do
> want to work on that project when the time is right will be able to
> locate the content that is in question more easily.
>
I suppose by content you mean documents? Also, how would you want to tag
the documents? Do you want me to add an extra "Needs update" field for this?
> One more point: Another problem with the way things are currently
> done: there's a single author for any given document. Thus, if entire
> documents are to be rewritten, there's a lack of "recognition" making
> it less desirable from a contribution perspective. I realize this is a
> pretty self-centered way to view things, but you must admit, it's
> largely what drives open-source. I actually suspect this is a large
> reason why people write duplicate content - so they can essentially
> stamp their name on it and call it theirs.
>
You can't have it all, can you? :)
Cheers,
Jorge
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