Subject:
Re: [discuss] Software-RAID-HOWTO
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
14 May 2008 17:06:37 +0100
Message-Id: <20080514161522.GY16470@linuxmafia.com>
(Just as a point of clarification, I really don't speak for LDP: I'm
just a system administrator who maintains one LDP HOWTO and one FAQ, and
helps with some of the copyediting. But volunteers and process are
really all that LDP has, a point I'll return to, below.)
Quoting David Greaves ####@####.####
> There isn't one - it's a wiki
But LDP doesn't publish wikis, and in particular doesn't publish _your_
wiki. It has a process and classification scheme, resulting in a
somewhat orderly collection of documents in its collection and mirrors.
When I took over a HOWTO at the request of its original author, it had
been unmaintained for (IIRC) seven years, needing a pretty thorough
rewrite. So, I got the old LinuxDoc source, rewrote the text,
eventually remembered I should follow the process described in the
Author Guide, and submitted the first of series of revisions.
You don't want to do that. You want LDP to merely point to a non-LDP
document outside its collection. In my opinion, that's too bad, and I'd
suggest you rethink your entire approach.
There's very little work remaining for you to submit
http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php?title=Overview&printable=yes as a
new version of the HOWTO. To repeat my suggestion -- which you have so
far flatly ignored and merely reiterated (paraphrasing) "The hell with
LDP's process; link to my wiki" -- why don't you skim-read the Author
Guide and send in a revision? You don't even need to mark it up; it can
just be flat ASCII, and one of the rest of us can fix that part. That's
the way LDP gets things done, and helping LDP get things done helps the
Linux community.
Thanks to your and the other wiki volunteers' use of GFDL licensing,
it's actually possible for anyone _else_ (me, the LDP core staff, anyone
at all) to pick up your wikified text, massage it very minimally, and
submit it _as_ a suggested replacement of the new HOWTO, but that would
be just a bit rude, and (I infer) isn't how LDP normally operates. And
LDP doesn't (I infer) have time and energy to deal with mildly annoyed
authors saying "Hey, I never submitted that GLDP'd Web site text as a
HOWTO!"
I hope you realise you're not the first person who's told LDP "The hell
with your publication process; link to my wiki." You're not. There's
been a virtual small parade of such folk. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry
has a wiki. I like wikis. However, asking LDP to link to other
people's wikis is nothing at all like its publications process. Why
don't you give that publication process a try, rather than utterly
ignoring it?
Apologies if the above is insufficiently diplomatic. I'm aiming for
both courtesy and clarity, but perhaps stressing the latter over the
former.
> > Other than that, you should probably look at the LDP Author Guide for
> > more tips and procedure for submitting a HOWTO. Telling LDP "I've
> > written a HOWTO, so please hyperlink to it" is generous but is not the
> > right way. ;->
>
> Thanks for the suggestion - but that's not the immediate point :)
It's _my_ immediate point. Any lack of diplomacy on my part might be
traceable to your saying, in effect, "The hell with your point and the
hell with LDP's process; link to my wiki."
Since I and countless other LDP authors find that publication process
easy and reasonable, I have to wonder why you don't, and flatly ignore
polite suggestions that you make at least a tiny effort to follow it.
(And that, I guess, is why I'm a sysadmin rather than a diplomat.)
