discuss: Software-RAID-HOWTO
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Software-RAID-HOWTO
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
25 May 2008 09:31:52 +0100
Message-Id: <20080525083628.GE4119@davespc>
Original Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 23:06:10 -0700
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 09:02:31AM +0100, David Greaves wrote:
> LDP is supposed to publish authoritative, accurate info. It should
> *care* that the info it publishes is wrong and either just stop
> publishing or link to a better source.
That's a goal we haven't come close to.
>
> Has anyone looked at the dates on most of the LDP docs?
Yes, I have.
> Can you, hand on heart, say that you are doing the community a
> service by publishing documents about linux from 1997, 1998, 2001
> even 2004 and *claiming they are relevant*?
The situation is worse than it looks because many of the updates sent
to LDP didn't update the entire doc. Some only made corrections of
typos while others only fixed something that a reader complained
about. In one case, a new maintainer spent all his time converting an
outdated doc to docbook but had no time to make any changes in it.
But this bumped up the revision date by a few years. So the actual
date of the latest major revision is often significantly older than
the dates shown.
> After a certain amount of time, documents should be reviewed and
> moved from the display to the archives.
There are some exceptions to this. Docs covering old hardware such as
the old serial port don't get out-of-date since the technology is
static.
> The display (primary url) should say that the document is considered
> out of date and there may be more relevant documents available
> elsewhere. This may include submitted URLs. It should, of course,
> point to the archive and it should invite readers to participate and
> update the document that they are interested in reading. This
> should be a manual decision but based on regular (annual?) reviews.
All this functionality was to be part of a content management system
(CMS) using Plone. But the implementer, David Merrill, became
seriously ill and couldn't complete the project.
> > Significantly, this is a problem that wiki's have not solved. At
> > any given point any wiki page can be useless or worse.
> Agreed. Whereas a text document is guaranteed to be correct?
>
> No. The difference is in the vetting process. But, something else
> that wasn't forseen back in the day - maintenance and deprecation.
> And honestly - that's where a wiki can beat your existing process.
> It lowers barrier-to-entry. A user spots an error and fixes it. The
> editorial *team* has lots of small vets to do. The existing process
> requires too many people to vet an entire multi-page document. Many
> documents don't have reachable authors (I was lucky).
>
> Checking a document for accuracy when it's published is all very
> well.
But in manly cases, since we couldn't find a technical reviewer (or
before the review process even existed) the document was NOT checked
for accuracy when it was published. And there was a case where an
author apparently purposely put inaccurate info in his howtos (which
have since been removed from the LDP collection).
> And for some subjects that's OK - facts tend not to change.
> But surely you can recognise that LDP is documenting a changing
> world where 'facts' do change; the HOWTOs need periodic review and
> re-validation.
True, but isn't it a higher priority to review a new HOWTOs so that it
gets published fast? And we don't even seem to have the volunteers to
do even this.
>
[snip]
> I am prepared to help. I am not prepared to support the current
> process. It's broken.
Great. But the current process isn't fully broken, there just aren't
volunteers to carry out the process. And note in my previous post that
LDP decided to go for wiki about 1 1/2 years ago but never did it due
to lack of volunteer effort. Also some years ago, I wrote a much shorter
version of the Author Guide and changed a thing or two to reflect a
shortage of volunteers. It was seemingly accepted although there was
some objection to the change in procedure. It never did get put on
the site, and it had some typos. So I just fixed typos and I'll post
it again to this list. And I think the procedures implied by my doc reflect
how we are actually doing things now.
[snip]
> As some staff have said and the recent changes pages show - no-one
> is doing much of anything. And clearly, continuing on the current
> downwards trajectory is not optimal.
All is not yet doom and gloom. There have recently been some people who
volunteered to help and they were to be told to post their offer of
help on the discuss list. One has already done so. But it's been my
sad experience that most people who volunteer never get around to doing
anything of much significance for the LDP. But we've had a few good
volunteers in the past who have worked nearly full time on LDP, if
only for a limited period of time.
David Lawyer
