On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 09:07:32PM +0300, Peter Nixon wrote:
We already have a Wiki. Few people edit it. We already have a publicly available "doc" directory. Few people submit changes.
Yes. I'll second Alan on this. It was my idea to setup the wiki, and I spent a LOT of time on it for a year or so, but have unfortunately not seen as much input from the community as we will have liked.
If there is only going to be a small group of people editing the docs, git and RST work much better than a wiki, and save maintaing both mediawiki and an SQL server :-)
IMHO you saw little input because you had a wiki that was rendered practically dead for three years. There was nothing there even just to tell newbies that there *is* a procedure to get an account, let alone anything that would actually entice them to edit. Similarly, keeping docs in another, even less trivially accessible format, will not alleviate this problem - it stands to reason that it can only make it worse. Paying people to overcome that problem could make things even. Yet, it will be that much harder to get an account and submit changes because it will require a little bit more toolset learning for users and a little bit more interaction from the admins. That's why I mentioned that ConfirmAccount mediawiki extension - it will reduce the amount of bother for the admins, while still allowing the users to use minimal necessary skills to do their edits. Obviously I have nothing against people also working on documentation in git, whether paid or not - the rule in documentation is that duplication is not something frowned upon by default (unlike with software). -- 2. That which causes joy or happiness.