discuss: Dealing with poor maintenance by maintainers
Subject:
Re: Dealing with poor maintenance by maintainers
From:
David Merrill ####@####.####
Date:
14 May 2002 11:34:20 -0000
Message-Id: <20020514122539.GG21436@lupercalia.net>
On Mon, May 13, 2002 at 12:14:59PM -0400, Tabatha Persad wrote:
> Yes! This is exactly what I meant!
>
> To me, the idea of being published in the LDP does give an author a place to
> showcase their writing abiities and benefit the community at the same time.
>
> When I incorporated the FAQ (previously the only source of information) at
> The Linux Counter into my HOWTO, I credited the author of the FAQ in my
> credits section. Since he got credit for his original work, he was pleased.
> Of course, it helps to point out that before I got started I did ask the
> author of the FAQ if he had created a howto or any additional help
> documentation, and he handed the job over to me since he didn't have time, or
> anymore beyond the faq.
>
> We also now credit authors of press clippings who mention The Linux Counter
> to encourage people to write about it, so they will have more incentive to
> use and write about the statistics. Hey if they're going to mention our
> name, we should mention theirs too!
>
> My verbose point is that showing authors upfront how their document will be
> handled, should they choose to stop maintaining it, should either encourage
> them to maintain it, or consider an alternative if they choose not to. I
> suppose it would help to mention the benefits in there somewhere before the
> detriments (if you can call it that). Above all, these authors chose to list
> their documentation with the LDP, and with that there are standards.... after
> all, there's not an Author's Guide for nothing!
We really should develop a policy manual on how to handle all of these
things. We have traditions and conventions we follow, but not all of
them are written down.
Anybody want to try collecting that stuff into a document? Hint, hint,
Tab!
You could start with an outline of what policies we should have in it,
then we'll lay out the noncontroversial stuff, and see what
controversies we uncover. Probably not too many, we have worked
through most of those types of issues. They just need to be documented
so we have it in print and it can easily be communicated to authors
and volunteers.
--
David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project ####@####.####
Lead Developer http://www.tldp.org
Microsoft always listens. It occasionally does the right thing, but only
when that fits comfortably into the larger plan.
-- Dan Gillmor
