discuss: Thread: an idea: LDP rating

What do you think about creating and automatically adding during
convertion, a chapter to each LDP howto/guide, with links that allow
our readers to rate a document? For example a page with five stars,
and user can rate grapahically. There can be two counters, for
registred users and for unrigestered. There can be also place for text
comments for registred users.

Sergiusz

good idea. however distributed nature of the TLDP documents, and
multiple formats make a decent and accurate rating system almost
impossible.

however some individual websites hosting the TLDP documents have
instituted their own rating system. e.g.:
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=viewlink&cid=310

saqib
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 04:06:49PM -0700, Ali, Saqib wrote:
> good idea. however distributed nature of the TLDP documents, and
> multiple formats make a decent and accurate rating system almost
> impossible.
> 
> however some individual websites hosting the TLDP documents have
> instituted their own rating system. e.g.:
> http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=viewlink&cid=310

I went to this site and looked at my Text-Terminal HOWTO.  My latest
at LDP is v.1.40 (Dec. 2006) but at this site it was v.1.36 (Aug.
2004).  So the site is hopelessly out-of-date.  I noted that for each
HOWTO it says "Rate this Site" so they are using software intended for
rating sites and not documents.  But I couldn't find the ratings.  My
Modem HOWTO at this site was more up-to-date: v0.38 (June 2005)
instead of the latest v0.39 (Jan. 2007).  The Linux tutorial here is
pretty much outdated and not clearly written (but the same is true for
many of our HOWTOs).  The site is of interest since it has daily news
items about Linux (from where?)

			David Lawyer

Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:
> What do you think about creating and automatically adding during
> convertion, a chapter to each LDP howto/guide, with links that allow
> our readers to rate a document? For example a page with five stars,
> and user can rate grapahically. There can be two counters, for
> registred users and for unrigestered. There can be also place for text
> comments for registred users.
Wouldn't a bug tracking system against the howto/guide be far more 
valuable and far more effective at improving documents?

Such a system could provide an easy way to report inaccuracies, an easy 
way to submit patches against the original version, and a way to submit 
requests for future enhancements or even future documents.

Adding a summary of outstanding bugs would essentially constitute a 
"rating" but with much more depth, and would actually benefit future 
versions of a document.

Thoughts?

-Stephanie

On 3/14/07, Stephanie Daugherty ####@####.#### wrote:
> Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:
> > What do you think about creating and automatically adding during
> > convertion, a chapter to each LDP howto/guide, with links that allow
> > our readers to rate a document? For example a page with five stars,
> > and user can rate grapahically. There can be two counters, for
> > registred users and for unrigestered. There can be also place for text
> > comments for registred users.
> Wouldn't a bug tracking system against the howto/guide be far more
> valuable and far more effective at improving documents?

Rating system allowing comments is something like simple bugtracking, is not it?

> Such a system could provide an easy way to report inaccuracies, an easy
> way to submit patches against the original version, and a way to submit
> requests for future enhancements or even future documents.
>
> Adding a summary of outstanding bugs would essentially constitute a
> "rating" but with much more depth, and would actually benefit future
> versions of a document.
>
> Thoughts?

Do we need such a big depth, will authors use it?

S.

> Wouldn't a bug tracking system against the howto/guide be far more
> valuable and far more effective at improving documents?

I see rehashing of the wiki discussion on the horizon ;)

Sorry Stephanie :)

Disclaimer:
I'm unfamiliar with just who is allowed to change the official
TLDP site and how that happens, so please forgive me if
this post makes no sense.

On 03/14/2007 06:29:18 AM, Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:
> On 3/14/07, Stephanie Daugherty ####@####.#### wrote:
>> Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:
>> > What do you think about creating and automatically adding during
>> > convertion, a chapter to each LDP howto/guide, with links that  
>> allow
>> > our readers to rate a document?

>> Wouldn't a bug tracking system against the howto/guide be far more
>> valuable and far more effective at improving documents?

>> Such a system could provide an easy way to report inaccuracies, an  
>> easy
>> way to submit patches against the original version, and a way to  
>> submit
>> requests for future enhancements or even future documents.
> 
> Do we need such a big depth, will authors use it?

That's the question.  Partly it depends on who's allowed to update
TLDP.  If TLDP was more like a regular project where committers
could fix any part of the project then the original author
would not have to be the one responding to the bug report.
This style of management would be like a project where there's
a large body of code and a large manual, and anybody who's
familiar with a particular area can fix the code and the
relevant part of the docs -- except without the code.

This would require some sort of "code" respository, CVS,
subversion, etc. so that unwanted changes can be backed
out, TLDP knows who's doing what, etc.  A build system would
be good too to automatically build straight from the
repository.

The "regular project" style of management would, seemingly,
be half way between "each author has his own document" and
a wiki.  There are already lots of Linux wikis out there,
and it's not clear to me that there are wikis which are
successful at producing cohesive documents.  It could be
that this approach would allow TLDP to play on it's strengh
and allow it to continue to produce output that nobody else
does.  (My feeling is that TLDP is becoming less relevant
as there's more Linux docs out there.  Not that this is bad,
but there should be a way to make TLDP more of the powerhouse
that it once was.)

Karl ####@####.####
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:

> What do you think about creating and automatically adding during
> convertion, a chapter to each LDP howto/guide, with links that allow
> our readers to rate a document? For example a page with five stars,
> and user can rate grapahically. There can be two counters, for
> registred users and for unrigestered. There can be also place for text
> comments for registred users.

After all has been said about our mirrors and such, I think we should not
care too much about those.  In the end, I envision this situation:

We have the wiki, where the quality of the documents is constantly
updated.
We have more volunteers or more active authors, who incorporate the
suggestions made in the wiki into their document.
Document gets updated and so best current "stable" version is distributed
through the mirrors.  No need to have rating on the mirror sites.

Tille.

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

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

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFF+TbRsIIUbMXbBA8RAmqjAKCDvJFulpzswKIJMlVlYSzduKzhOgCcDur7
hh7GAp+SuySHNwGbb+/WlVc=
=rQD7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"No need to have rating on the mirror sites." - so if you get, as a
reader, a document from a mirror, how you can rate it or make some
comments?

S.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:

> "No need to have rating on the mirror sites." - so if you get, as a
> reader, a document from a mirror, how you can rate it or make some
> comments?

There should be a pointer back to our site?  Every document should have a
feedback section, it can be part of that section, no?

Tille.

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

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

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFF+UMGsIIUbMXbBA8RApFCAJ9wonNBG9UrDNlexZ7Qr4vf0U2XiwCfXpGn
HUZuPjgQep+tCGVCPn2W8+I=
=AjM5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----