discuss: small demo page
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Re: small demo page
From:
Randy Kramer ####@####.####
Date:
13 Sep 2005 14:54:57 -0000
Message-Id: <200509131053.22936.rhkramer@gmail.com>
On Tuesday 13 September 2005 10:16 am, jdd wrote:
> Stein Gjoen wrote:
> > What does it take to revitalise TLDP?
>
> if I don't err, the original thread was about using a wiki
> to build a new discussion space.
>
> I build this on
>
> http://dodin.org/~tldp/mw/index.php/Main_Page
>
> and had exactly zero (0) hits from the tldp (the site was
> advetised only here)
jdd:
I would have sworn that I was there (more than once) as was Stein--are you
sure your counter works, or don't we count?
> so revitalise is not on the way :-((
Well, maybe not, but I don't think that's the only datapoint that should be
considered.
all:
I don't know how or if tldp should be revitalised--what was it at its most
vital?
My impression/recollection is that it has been:
* (its primary purpose, iiuc) a place for HOWTOs and similar documents to
be hosted for downloading by users looking for information
Note that the authors of those documents (again, afaik) have not necessarily
(or even usually??) been "members" of the tldp--anyone could write a
documents and "submit" it to the tldp for hosting
AFAIK, tldp still accomplishes the above. (Has there been a falloff in
quantity of documents downloaded recently? Is it because the documents are
shipped with many Linux distributions?0
In other words, what signs do you (anyone) see that tldp is becoming less
vital?
* At various times, efforts have been put forth to improve the process of
writing, editing, publishing, or distributing those documents. I'm not sure
how alive all of those are at the moment--is something there signalling a
loss of vitality?
Aside: I think I've said something like this before: my biggest interest in
documentation occurred when I knew the least about Linux--I needed
documentation to figure out what was going on. At that time, if I was
reading documentation and had a question, saw a typo, ... and had an easy
means to address the issue immediately (like having the document published on
a wiki, or a simple means (for a newbie) to generate a diff or similar< I
would have been happy to address the issue immediately (fix a typo or grammo,
post a question where I was confused (and later, if I found the answer, post
the answer or proposed clarification to the language). Now that I've learned
some things, I have no great interest in going back to read documents that I
read once purely for the purpose of looking for typos, confusing language,
open questions/missing information.
IMHO, if you want to revitalize some part of TLDP, take advantage (in the
nicest way) of newbies--make it easy for them to correct typos, fix confusing
language, etc. etc. If there is a problem that some authors don't want to
give up control of their documents, I'd even go so far as to suggest
rewriting them via a "wiki like process" (as I've suggested for documents
with authors who can no longer be located).
But, the whole question of revitalising TLDP depends on what its goals are.
What are the goals of TLDP?
regards,
Randy Kramer
