discuss: Thread: Manifesto for 2010 (draft01) page

Hello,

I wrote down some ideas of what the LDP should be for the next year:

http://wiki.tldp.org/draft01

Some (few: mostly openness) of these ideas are important to me, most 
are only that: ideas, to be discussed, modifed, removed, changed...

but we have to have a manifesto and a calendar and to attract people 
to live

sincerely
jdd
-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM

"purpose" is misspelled as "opurpose".

2008/9/3 jdd ####@####.####

> Hello,
>
> I wrote down some ideas of what the LDP should be for the next year:
>
> http://wiki.tldp.org/draft01
>
> Some (few: mostly openness) of these ideas are important to me, most are
> only that: ideas, to be discussed, modifed, removed, changed...
>
> but we have to have a manifesto and a calendar and to attract people to
> live
>
> sincerely
> jdd
> --
> http://www.dodin.net
> http://valerie.dodin.org
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>

Fabrício Godoy a écrit :
> "purpose" is misspelled as "opurpose".

nothing more :-)

feel free to fix such things without notice, I don't write as well as 
I would like :-)

jdd


-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM

On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 09:02:52AM +0200, jdd wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I wrote down some ideas of what the LDP should be for the next year:
>
> http://wiki.tldp.org/draft01

This is not much of a manifesto.  The current (but a little old) LDP
Manifesto http://www.linux.ucla.edu/LDP/manifesto.html seems to be
better but needs some revision.  At my last revision, only the first
section was revised since that was the part that most needed revision.
My plan was to go thru the rest later on, but it never happened since
I thought that a higher priority was to come up with much simpler
LDP rules (specified by howtos and guides) for writing documentation
and reviewing it.  I wrote a couple of HOWTOs for this purpose but
they never got on the site.

A major flaw in the current manifesto  is that it directs would-be
authors to the long "LDP Author Guide" which is not only far too long
but emphasizes DocBook instead of LinuxDoc.  I wrote a shorter
Author-HOWTO but it never got onto the site even though there didn't
seem to be major objections to it.  (Perhaps there were but they were
not stated.)

Note that I'm not the only author of the Manifesto as a couple of
others worked on it before I led a major revision effort on the discussion
list in 1999, where various persons helped revise my revision-draft.
Except for the last revision where it was just me that made the
changes since no one seemed to have any other ideas or objections.
This was likely due to the smaller number of people following the
mailing list.  The present Manifesto has changed much from the early
ones in 1993.  See
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/linux-doc-project/LDP-Manifesto
(LDP Manifesto 1993 by Matt Welsh, original Manifesto author).  I'm
not sure if Matt Walsh's name should be on it the present Manifesto but
perhaps it should.

So what I propose is to revise the current Manifesto to mention the
wiki.  Should a manifesto, which covers purposes, policies, and to
some extent governance of an organization be put out as a wiki on the
internet for anyone to revise?

Note that the lofty goals of LDP mentioned in the Manifesto have not
been achieved and perhaps the manifesto needs to state this, although
anyone who looks at our website will soon realize this.

			David Lawyer

On Thursday 04 September 2008 01:42 pm, David Lawyer wrote:
> So what I propose is to revise the current Manifesto to mention the
> wiki.  Should a manifesto, which covers purposes, policies, and to
> some extent governance of an organization be put out as a wiki on the
> internet for anyone to revise?

On many wikis, specific pages can be locked to prevent editing.  Rather than 
see the manifesto put in some other part of the site, away from the wiki, I'd 
recommend leaving it in the wiki and locking it (assuming that can be done in 
MoinMoin).  

For a period of time until the manifesto is agreed upon, it would seem 
appropriate to allow editing.

Randy Kramer
-- 
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I created a video 
instead."--with apologies to Cicero, et.al.

Randy Kramer a écrit :

> recommend leaving it in the wiki and locking it (assuming that can be done in 
> MoinMoin).  

should be possible. probably a small administrative problem, for wich 
we need to wait for sergius be back

> 
> For a period of time until the manifesto is agreed upon, it would seem 
> appropriate to allow editing.

yes

and about the draft01 page, the name is on purpose: anything can be 
modified, including the title :-)

jdd

-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM

David Lawyer wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 09:02:52AM +0200, jdd wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I wrote down some ideas of what the LDP should be for the next year:
>>
>> http://wiki.tldp.org/draft01
> 
> This is not much of a manifesto.  The current (but a little old) LDP
> Manifesto http://www.linux.ucla.edu/LDP/manifesto.html seems to be
> better but needs some revision.  At my last revision, only the first
> section was revised since that was the part that most needed revision.
> My plan was to go thru the rest later on, but it never happened since
> I thought that a higher priority was to come up with much simpler
> LDP rules (specified by howtos and guides) for writing documentation
> and reviewing it.  I wrote a couple of HOWTOs for this purpose but
> they never got on the site.

It's fascinating that there is much discussion about docbooks, wikis, process,
format etc.

My primary complaint about LDP is that it presents outdated, misleading and
often plain *wrong* information to its readers - and it does so in an
authoritative manner.

Doctors have a creed "First, do no harm". Maybe LDP should have one:

 "First, spread no misinformation".



David

PS David, do you mind if I enquire here if my periodic reminders of your
'promise' (for want of a better word) been getting through? I've seen no
response and no action.

David Greaves a écrit :

> It's fascinating that there is much discussion about docbooks, wikis, process,
> format etc.
> 
> My primary complaint about LDP is that it presents outdated, misleading and
> often plain *wrong* information to its readers - and it does so in an
> authoritative manner.
> 
> Doctors have a creed "First, do no harm". Maybe LDP should have one:
> 
>  "First, spread no misinformation".

outdated is certainly right for many, wrong is probably wrong...

do you mean "wrong even at the moment the doc was written"?

if not your mail is simply troll... *all* of our documents (AFAIK) are 
*dated* so any reader should know.

and for the record, I've seen yesterday on an other list a very 
cleaver people give reference to a HOWTO dated 2005 and still right.

so was my own HOWTO, not updated for 5 years because nothing changed 
related to it's content, and I changed it only because new tools are 
available (in fact recollection of old tools, nothing really new)

Notice I wrote in my draft01 document an agenda, with actions to do 
and end of task date. We are not many, we have to work in sequence

anyway, if you have some problems with some document, feel free to 
open a page with this document name on the wiki and write there what 
you want. It's not yet advertised, but it works

jdd

-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM

jdd wrote:
> David Greaves a écrit :
> 
>> It's fascinating that there is much discussion about docbooks, wikis,
>> process,
>> format etc.
>>
>> My primary complaint about LDP is that it presents outdated,
>> misleading and
>> often plain *wrong* information to its readers - and it does so in an
>> authoritative manner.
>>
>> Doctors have a creed "First, do no harm". Maybe LDP should have one:
>>
>>  "First, spread no misinformation".
> 
> outdated is certainly right for many, wrong is probably wrong...
> 
> do you mean "wrong even at the moment the doc was written"?
No. That's an authoring/vetting process.

> if not your mail is simply troll... *all* of our documents (AFAIK) are
> *dated* so any reader should know.
Err.... thanks for the accusation.
So if you don't immediately agree 100% then I'm a troll?

What on earth is "trolling" about suggesting that an organisation dedicated to
documenting and sharing information should have "not mislead people" as a
primary objective ?

Anyway, lets not argue about that. My intent is to be constructive. My proposal
was positive and suggested a high level principle.

> and for the record, I've seen yesterday on an other list a very cleaver
> people give reference to a HOWTO dated 2005 and still right.
Which clearly shows that date is not a deciding factor in determining correctness.

Whereas "HOWTO Install the latest version of Ubuntu" is *highly likely* to be
wrong after 6 months or less.

No. I think you know what I'm complaining about.

It seems to me (from my experience) that LDP would rather continue to publish
misleading information than remove something from the 'current' list of
documents if it does not 'own' the more accurate and up-to-date information.
"Our way or the highway".

I think this attitude from some members could be countered if the LDP had a
stated goal of "spread no misinformation".
The current approach seems to be "provide the best information we can".
Seems worthy - but the problem is that it allows the LDP to sit back and ignore
the kind of problem I encountered.

The internet today has no place for an LDP that does not co-exist with the many
other sources of information. Sometimes the best thing the LDP can do is to
provide a HOWTO - other times it should acknowledge that a 3rd party wiki (or
even, tux forbid, a licensed, forced registration, paid-for, NDA-requiring MSDN
article) is the best information it knows about (although of course, it may
provide other links and archived or deprecated content).

To take the example above, if someone says "That Ubuntu Howto is outdated,
here's a link to a better article". Then the article should (IMHO) be checked,
possibly marked as "identified as outdated/deprecated" and the link should be
*considered* for inclusion in some user-friendly text that points to potentially
more up-to-date information and, of course, the original article.

> anyway, if you have some problems with some document, feel free to open
> a page with this document name on the wiki and write there what you
> want. It's not yet advertised, but it works

Like this:
  http://wiki.tldp.org/Software_RAID_HOWTO
(Check the date)


David

David Greaves a écrit :

>> if not your mail is simply troll... *all* of our documents (AFAIK) are
>> *dated* so any reader should know.
> Err.... thanks for the accusation.
> So if you don't immediately agree 100% then I'm a troll?
> 
> What on earth is "trolling" about suggesting that an organisation dedicated to
> documenting and sharing information should have "not mislead people" as a
> primary objective ?

you didn't said that:
"My primary complaint about LDP is that it presents outdated, 
misleading and often plain *wrong* information to its readers - and it 
does so in an authoritative manner."

you said that we *do* bad things, not that we shouldn't do them on the 
future. May be you where upset when writing :-).

Of course we don't have to publish wrong material, as long as we can. 
the wiki is not to make this better, only review can do. don't expect 
too much from the users.

there is plenty of wrong technical pages around the net. I hope we can 
make a little better.

On the past, any HOWTO had to be reviewed, but it's often very difficult.

> Anyway, lets not argue about that. My intent is to be constructive.

god, me too :-)

  My proposal
> was positive and suggested a high level principle.

on wich any body have to agree

>> and for the record, I've seen yesterday on an other list a very cleaver
>> people give reference to a HOWTO dated 2005 and still right.
> Which clearly shows that date is not a deciding factor in determining correctness.

this is a real difficulty. One of my wish should be to have at least 
two people looking at every HOWTO, the author and a reviewer, but we 
never could achieve this. May be we have to try to find contributors, 
it's one of the things I hope to be able to do.

this is why it's *very important* to have some *simple work* to give 
to newcommers, and there the wiki can help. People stay in a structure 
when the structure *give us work*. We have to give some work at any 
people asking, but reasonable work somebody can acheive in a 
reasonable time. This is not easy to find.

> 
> Whereas "HOWTO Install the latest version of Ubuntu" is *highly likely* to be
> wrong after 6 months or less.

1) I don't think we should work on too distro-related things. Ubuntu 
wiki is very good in this respect.
2) the HOWTO name, if accepted, should be "HOWTO install the Ubuntu 
7.10 on i386 computers"

> It seems to me (from my experience) that LDP would rather continue to publish
> misleading information than remove something from the 'current' list of
> documents if it does not 'own' the more accurate and up-to-date information.
> "Our way or the highway".

there is here http://tldp.org/
  - Need Review
  - In Progress
  - Unmaintained

entry

of course the LDP was not uptodate for some time now, but we all try 
to fix this, don't you?

> Like this:
>   http://wiki.tldp.org/Software_RAID_HOWTO
> (Check the date)

exactly. I have to read it, I just installed a software raid, without 
any use of doc... (openSUSE 11 - old hobby machine)

now we have to move the old HOWTO to "obsolete" or "archive" and store 
the new page ont the HOWTO static list.

However, right now, I don't know how this can be done. I hope it will 
be documented on the wiki soon :-)

just a last note: may be your initial mail (6? month ago?) was the 
trigger of the LDP restart. thanks, but acknowledge this and don't 
blame us now (us= me, but also you and many others)

jdd


-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM