discuss: Linux documentation wiki
Subject:
Re: Linux documentation wiki
From:
Tom Fawcett ####@####.####
Date:
16 Jan 2002 04:47:31 -0000
Message-Id: <15429.1523.235159.257250@pool0361.cvx40-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net>
John Tapsell ####@####.#### wrote:
> >> 1. the author only edits it, basically as things work now
> ..
> > I am likely to stick to 1. for a while to see how things go.
>
> Just out of curioristy - how come? I know it's personal preference etc, but
> just curious why you object to a wiki version?
I'll give an answer to this since I think I'd take the same approach.
My document (Bootdisk-HOWTO) contains lots of instructions, some of which
are fairly detailed and depend on each other. I take responsibility for
whether they work, and I often get questions/comments/complaints on them.
Whenever I make a substantial change, I run through the instructions
carefully to make sure everything still works. I'd welcome a co-author who
was equally diligent, but allowing people to make arbitrary changes sounds
like a bad idea; I'm the one who gets the mail and has to figure out
what's wrong. Even so-called "registered users" wouldn't necessarily have
the same responsibility. Think of HOWTOs as source code and you'll
understand why authors would be wary of changes.
Having said that, I still think wikis are a cool idea and I'd like to see
how well they work for our docs.
Regards,
-Tom
