discuss: Thread: status report author checkup

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Hello Everybody,


At the time when I started the checkup, about two weeks ago, there were
+/- 450 documents in our HOWTO list
(http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html).  As an arbitrary
limit on up-to-dateness of the document, I considered that if the document
was updated this year, the author would probably still be alive.  About 30
authors updated their documents this year.
All the others were contacted.  By now, over 110 authors answered.  Most
of them (over 80) said that they would update their document during the
coming weeks or months, or that it is still up to date.

Fifteen authors have asked to archive their document because it is no
longer current and can not be updated because the technology discussed is
no longer in use and they don't get any feedback any longer.  Fifteen
others are looking for a new maintainer.

That leaves me with a list of nearly 340 authors, to whom 132 mails
bounced.  The others didn't answer (yet).  In other words: a good half of
our authors didn't reply.  For now, I'll give them credit because of the
holiday season.  I'll keep you posted on this.

Tille.

- --
Machtelt Garrels                ####@####.####
Co-editor of LDP Weekly News    http://tldp.org/ldpwn/latest.html

My Penguin, my freedom.         http://tille.xalasys.com

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On Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 03:02:54PM +0000, Machtelt Garrels wrote:
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> 
> Hello Everybody,
> 
> 
> At the time when I started the checkup, about two weeks ago, there were
> +/- 450 documents in our HOWTO list
> (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html).  As an arbitrary
> limit on up-to-dateness of the document, I considered that if the document
> was updated this year, the author would probably still be alive.  About 30
> authors updated their documents this year.
> All the others were contacted.  By now, over 110 authors answered.  Most
> of them (over 80) said that they would update their document during the
> coming weeks or months, or that it is still up to date.
> 
> Fifteen authors have asked to archive their document because it is no
> longer current and can not be updated because the technology discussed is
> no longer in use and they don't get any feedback any longer.  Fifteen
> others are looking for a new maintainer.
> 
> That leaves me with a list of nearly 340 authors, to whom 132 mails
> bounced.  The others didn't answer (yet).  In other words: a good half of
> our authors didn't reply.  For now, I'll give them credit because of the
> holiday season.  I'll keep you posted on this.

Great job!

The half that didn't reply:  This doesn't mean that these people have
read the email.  Perhaps half of this half didn't even read the email
and most of these didn't even read the heading.  What happens to many
is that they become overwhelmed by email and just don't look at much
of it.  They could have mail lying around a year or two old which they
haven't had time to look at.  Something like this is happening to me.

Another problem is that many authors don't know if what they wrote is
out-of-date.  Or rather, each has a probability distribution in mind as
to just how much out-of-date a doc is.  I've pointed out before that a
frequently updated doc may be out-of-date too.  Just updating based on
typos and dead urls, etc. found by a few readers isn't enough to keep
a doc up-to-date.  So one of the reasons for non-response is that the
author just doesn't know if the doc is out-of-date.

Another problem is authors who have multiple howtos.  The email to me
didn't say which howto it pertained to.  Two of my howtos have links to
a number of other howtos, and these howtos are out-of-date.  People
will click on the links and get stale info, although I've warned them
in some cases.  This is a kind of out-of-dateness.

So the survey could have been more complex with more choices, although
it was pretty good since it allowed people to answer in sentences and
describe the status of their docs in their own words.  I think the
last time something like this was done, David Merrill did it, and the
date was about 2000 ??  I think he only emailed in case a doc hadn't
been updated in a couple of years.  So this survey covers more of our
collection.

			David Lawyer

David Lawyer said on Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 12:05:44AM -0700,:

 > The half  that didn't  reply: This doesn't  mean that  these people
 > have read  the email.  Perhaps half  of this half  didn't even read
 > the email
 
I agree;  not many will be  aware of this exercise;  how about putting
this up on some page - slashdot for example?

 
-- 
         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com
``Those willing to give up a little liberty for a
little security deserve neither security nor liberty''

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On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, David Lawyer wrote:

> Another problem is that many authors don't know if what they wrote is
> out-of-date.  Or rather, each has a probability distribution in mind as
> to just how much out-of-date a doc is.  I've pointed out before that a
> frequently updated doc may be out-of-date too.  Just updating based on
> typos and dead urls, etc. found by a few readers isn't enough to keep
> a doc up-to-date.  So one of the reasons for non-response is that the
> author just doesn't know if the doc is out-of-date.

Without looking at each and every HOWTO, I think most authors who replied
had a fair idea about the level of oudatedness of their document.  Several
asked for a review to check on that issue.  I think that if they did not
reply, it was mostly because the E-mail address was old or because the
mail gets archived in some mailbox that is not frequented all too often.
Replies keep dripping in, so this report is not definite.

> Another problem is authors who have multiple howtos.  The email to me
> didn't say which howto it pertained to.  Two of my howtos have links to
> a number of other howtos, and these howtos are out-of-date.  People
> will click on the links and get stale info, although I've warned them
> in some cases.  This is a kind of out-of-dateness.

For this and your remark below, we would need a database and someone who
is more apt to writing scripts than I am.  I just made a text file and
copy/pasted the addresses of the authors in my mail program.  I have a
couple of other text files for keeping track of the state of a HOWTO, I'm
too stupid to do anything else.
Setting up a database would require cooperation with iBiblio (I'm not fond
of hosting it anywhere else, because of the risk of scattering our info
and becoming dependent on infrastructures that might go down for any
reason, cfr. the author database), a database administrator, probably a
webinterface for input and output, and so on, and it would be months
before any action is taken, if the project does not die a silent death.

> So the survey could have been more complex with more choices, although
> it was pretty good since it allowed people to answer in sentences and
> describe the status of their docs in their own words.  I think the
> last time something like this was done, David Merrill did it, and the
> date was about 2000 ??  I think he only emailed in case a doc hadn't
> been updated in a couple of years.  So this survey covers more of our
> collection.

One of the most important things, imho, is that the authors get the
feeling that we care, and that the visitors of TLDP and its hundreds of
mirrors see that the project is alive.  So we opted for this non-perfect
solution.  In the future surveys might become more automated and detailed,
depending on our resources.

Tille.

- --
Machtelt Garrels                ####@####.####
Co-editor of LDP Weekly News    http://tldp.org/ldpwn/latest.html

My Penguin, my freedom.         http://tille.xalasys.com

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For what it's worth, I'm the author of the very old Parallel
Processing HOWTO, which I have been trying to upgrade into the
new Parallel Processing Guide.  I also am a Professor at UK,
so it isn't shocking that the update has been going slower
than hoped given that it is done in my "copius spare time."

In any case, the volume of email involving TLDP issues that
I don't care about makes me pretty slow to respond to any
requests -- pretty much the same point David was making....

Perhaps it would be appropriate to move a lot of this volume
to a wiki or other non-email medium, reserving email for the
critical author contacts...?

Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
>> That leaves me with a list of nearly 340 authors, to whom 132 mails
>> bounced.  The others didn't answer (yet).  In other words: a good half of
>> our authors didn't reply.  For now, I'll give them credit because of the
>> holiday season.  I'll keep you posted on this.
...
> The half that didn't reply:  This doesn't mean that these people have
> read the email.  Perhaps half of this half didn't even read the email
> and most of these didn't even read the heading.  What happens to many
> is that they become overwhelmed by email and just don't look at much
> of it.  They could have mail lying around a year or two old which they
> haven't had time to look at.  Something like this is happening to me.

-- 
Hank Dietz, Professor & James F. Hardymon Chair in Networking         .-.
University of Kentucky, Electrical & Computer Engineering Dept.   .-. /v\
453 F. Paul Anderson Tower                                        /v\// \\
Lexington, KY 40506-0046                               Parallel  // \\   )\
Phone: (859) 257 4701  FAX: (859) 257 3092          Processing  /(   )\-^^
URL: http://aggregate.org/hankd/                  using Linux    ^^-^^

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On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:

> David Lawyer said on Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 12:05:44AM -0700,:
>
>  > The half  that didn't  reply: This doesn't  mean that  these people
>  > have read  the email.  Perhaps half  of this half  didn't even read
>  > the email
>
> I agree;  not many will be  aware of this exercise;  how about putting
> this up on some page - slashdot for example?

Good idea.  Can you or anybody else take care of this?  I'll also put an
announce on TLDP's front page.

Tille.

- --
My Penguin, my freedom.		http://tille.xalasys.com
Books:				http://writers.fultus.com/garrels
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I was out of this list for quite a time, now, so forgive me 
if I come back on an already (recently) devised problem.

But I'm heavily involved with wiki, now (mediawiki (the wiki 
of wikipedia), for example http://www.opensuse.org).

I think there is no more reason to continue disregarding the 
wiki way.

I think there should be a mediawiki on the tldp site. It 
would be very nice if any HOWTO was present in wiki form, 
but even without this, a _main place_ where any volunteer 
author could share advices with users would be very nice.

This is nearly no admin work, untar, setup (5 minutes), 
write a main page (an afternoon) and go...

In fact I would really appreciate a mediawiki->docbook 
backend, because I use docbook _only_ for my howto and it's 
a reason it's not often up to date, it's each time a two 
days process to learn back docbook.

Mediawiki is now a fairly mature project, reasonably easy 
but powerfull, and quite largely spread, so many people 
begin to know it's syntax

and it's not OT here, it could be far more easy to track 
authors and outdated HOWTO's with this wiki in place!!!

sincerely
jdd

-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr



-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

On Wednesday 10 August 2005 08:24 am, jdd wrote:
> I think there should be a mediawiki on the tldp site. It
> would be very nice if any HOWTO was present in wiki form,
> but even without this, a _main place_ where any volunteer
> author could share advices with users would be very nice.

+1

> This is nearly no admin work, untar, setup (5 minutes),
> write a main page (an afternoon) and go...
>
> In fact I would really appreciate a mediawiki->docbook
> backend, because I use docbook _only_ for my howto and it's
> a reason it's not often up to date, it's each time a two
> days process to learn back docbook.

+1

Randy Kramer

On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 02:24:40PM +0200, jdd wrote:
> I was out of this list for quite a time, now, so forgive me 
> if I come back on an already (recently) devised problem.
> 
> But I'm heavily involved with wiki, now (mediawiki (the wiki 
> of wikipedia), for example http://www.opensuse.org).
> 
> I think there is no more reason to continue disregarding the 
> wiki way.
> 
> I think there should be a mediawiki on the tldp site. It 
> would be very nice if any HOWTO was present in wiki form, 
> but even without this, a _main place_ where any volunteer 
> author could share advices with users would be very nice.

I don't understand.  Would there be a wiki for each howto for
discussion of that howto and of Linux problems within the scope of the
howto?  I've got a problem with this, since some of the email I get is
asking for help by people that haven't even read the doc., some is
poorly written, some don't provide enough info on their problem, some
are asking for help with a MS Windows OS, etc.  In other words there
is a lot of noise and readers shouldn't be exposed to this noise.
Except for a howto that not being maintained.  Then people could look
at the comments and see that the author is not responding, then that's
useful.  It would be nice to have someone from LDP read over all the
comments on all the howtos, but that's a full-time job.

A big problem with reader comments is that most readers don't know the
topic (if they knew the topic, they wouldn't be reading about it).  So
comments from them may not reveal errors, etc.

At present, if the author uses a mailto url in the doc, then just a
click will start an email to the author.

> This is nearly no admin work, untar, setup (5 minutes), 
> write a main page (an afternoon) and go...
> 
> In fact I would really appreciate a mediawiki->docbook 
> backend, because I use docbook _only_ for my howto and it's 
> a reason it's not often up to date, it's each time a two 
> days process to learn back docbook.

This is why I think it best to use LinuxDoc.  When I modify something
in LinuxDoc, often I don't even need to add a single tag, since
paragraphs need no tags.  I've looked at wiki markup and think that
LinuxDoc markup is no more complex.  But I guess there are more people
around that know wiki markup so I think that a wiki->linuxdoc converter
would be nice too.

> 
> Mediawiki is now a fairly mature project, reasonably easy 
> but powerfull, and quite largely spread, so many people 
> begin to know it's syntax
> 
> and it's not OT here, it could be far more easy to track 
> authors and outdated HOWTO's with this wiki in place!!!

I'm not sure that the wikis would be used all that much and it puts a
burden on every author to check out his wiki frequently for comments
or modifications.  We already have a howto-generator to make it easy
to create a howto (or to learn Linuxdoc, since once the draft is
written one wouldn't use the howto-generator anymore).

But wikis to discuss a doc?  Good idea perhaps (but see above), except
I wonder how many readers would find it.  What % of readers download
howtos (such as the Debian packages) and read them off-line?  Then
online readers many use Google, etc. to find just a section of a
howto, and never know there is a wiki for comments, since they never
read the part of the howto that links to the wiki.

I assume that all howtos would contain a link to their wiki comments.
Perhaps the wiki comments could be added to the howto verbatim in
cases where the author isn't actively maintaining the howto.  But
automating this is a problem.

Furthermore, someone said a year ago or so that they were taking all
LDP docs and putting them on the web in wiki.  Did this ever happen
and if so, what are the results?

The vapor-ware database for LDP was going to tie in with wikis and
that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database could be used
to email the author the changes made to the wiki.  A good database
and content management system is needed by LDP much more than a wiki,
but it's a lot more work to implement.

			David Lawyer

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On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, David Lawyer wrote:

> But wikis to discuss a doc?  Good idea perhaps (but see above), except
> I wonder how many readers would find it.  What % of readers download
> howtos (such as the Debian packages) and read them off-line?  Then
> online readers many use Google, etc. to find just a section of a
> howto, and never know there is a wiki for comments, since they never
> read the part of the howto that links to the wiki.

Apart from my personal aversion, I am worried about a couple of things:

- - How does wiki-usage relate to our mirror sites?
- - Apart from all the useless comments by readers of good faith, how about
those small-minded people who use impolite and rude language?
- - Wiki-to-docbook/linuxdoc: does that mean that wiki comments can directly
be used to change a document, presumbly by the author?  I don't see how
this would work...

> The vapor-ware database for LDP was going to tie in with wikis and
> that would make the wikis more valuable.  This database could be used
> to email the author the changes made to the wiki.  A good database
> and content management system is needed by LDP much more than a wiki,
> but it's a lot more work to implement.

Agreed.  I don't know anything about databases or it would already have
been there.  We need

- - somebody who is committed
- - agreement of iBiblio
- - overview of data that should be managed in a DB

Tille.

- --
Machtelt Garrels                ####@####.####
Review Coordinator    	 	http://www.tldp.org/authors/

My Penguin, my freedom.         http://tille.xalasys.com

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