discuss: Re: Beginning of outline for policies
Subject:
Re: Fwd: Beginning of outline for policies
From:
Alexander Bartolich ####@####.####
Date:
19 May 2002 20:33:26 -0000
Message-Id: <3CE80B56.3090507@gmx.at>
> jdd wrote:
> [...]
> is the LDP going to be a small castle of unquestionable docs
> in the middle of an ocean of silly HTML pages?
This is the impression I have.
I admit that the subject covered by LDP is unique.
But still I consider the way things are handled here as
unlinuxian.
Right now sourceforge is state of the art.
If features a semi-automatic mechanism to register a project.
Offered resources are vast: CVS, web-area, database, bug-tracker,
public forums, etc. But probably the most valuable thing is the
culture of "no questions asked, just go ahead and try".
Most of the projects there are probably nothing more than
documentation of a learning process. Yet another hello world
example. But this has the important effect of training people
in the tools of free software development. Release early,
expect flames, accept patches.
> how many "HOWTO" are already not given to LDP because of
> such discussions?
Hard to tell. But I strongly believe that excellence cannot
be achieved by granting membership only to excellent authors.
The chance of LDP is to lead members to excellence.
You might dismiss this as yet another newbie wanting to
change everything on entry.
But then why is this place not drowning in nebiews?
LDP still has a very good name. And IMHO it is much easier to
write meaningful prose than working code.
So why do people prefer freshmeat to get their share of fame?
What I do know is that a complete, correct, nicely formatted
and pleasently worded HOWTO is a lot of work. And the linuxian
way to handle that is to start with a sketch, distribute work
to a team, and improve imcrementally.
> I don't know how you work, but for me I use more and more
> google to find solution and simply never read howtos from
> ldp (of course I find often them by google).
News groups and mailing lists are a natural method to
distribute the work of documentation amongst a team.
Formal quality is low. But the medium is fast.
And aggressively optimized for cooperation and feedback.
It requires a lot of intelligence to browse the archives, though.
And there are severe limits on complexity and message length.
LDP is in a very favourable position. Here is the know-how
to handle technical and editorial problems of long documents.
What it desperately needs is an army of contributors.
People who know just one tiny thing. Newbies, testers, followers
of strange distributions, weirdos taking stuff to the limit.
IMHO we need to _lower_ the barriers of entry,
and increase the cycles of improvement.
--
When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect.
Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
