On Apr 9, 2007, at 1:46 PM, Landon Fuller wrote:
On Apr 9, 2007, at 10:17, markd@macports.org wrote:
But the disadvantage, as opposed to a Wiki, is that joe user can't make changes to the docs. And that is what people want. Although I wonder if we have Joe user contributing to the docs if it will really be better. It may be, I just don't know.
I've come across a number of projects using wiki documentation lately. Lacking any centralized editing, it tends to vary wildly in quality, substance, and style. Information is poorly organized and difficult to find, and documentation is often duplicated.
Maybe my experiences aren't a sufficiently representative example, but I've been left with a very poor impression of open source wiki documentation.
-landonf
One solution to this problem I was thinking about is a middle ground between requiring coding skills to allow you to edit a doc (if you have them, logic tells me you already hold a macports commit bit and therefore can edit the Wiki already.... or are not afraid to delve into Dockbook sources ;-) and giving access to everyone (open season on our Wiki, anyone can edit): said middle ground could be a WIKI_EDITING trac permission setting (or whatever to that effect) we could hand selectively to those who've proven an at least acceptably high knowledge of MacPorts; said people need not be skilled enough to commit to our repo and/or know how to edit docbook sources, but should at least be knowledgeable enough to know what they're talking about when writing documentation. We could receive nominations for such people and judge based on their activity on our lists, for instance, and maybe even the Wiki editor status could be seen as a step before gaining commit access to the repo (though not necessarily). Thoughts? -jmpp