From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 3 17:12:24 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net (goose.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18AB437B41D; Fri, 3 May 2002 17:12:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pool0260.cvx40-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([216.244.43.5] helo=mindspring.com) by goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #2) id 173n9l-0006XU-00; Fri, 03 May 2002 17:12:09 -0700 Message-ID: <3CD3273B.1D8F54F4@mindspring.com> Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 17:11:39 -0700 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "R. David Murray" Cc: JJ Behrens , Dave Hayes , Brooks Davis , Michael Sierchio , Drew Tomlinson , bmah@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: organic documentation References: <20020503142917.H32803-100000@twirl.bitdance.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "R. David Murray" wrote: > Sorry for dropping in to the middle of a conversation, but this > comment puzzles me. I fail to see how: > > handbook + per-page comments from readers > > is *inferior* to: > > handbook with no comments > > given that the handbook maintainers do not have infinate time > to polish the handbook, nor infinate knowledge about the > quirks discoverd by the community. 1) Qualification of sources of information. Not every commenting reader is adding something other than "First Post! Nyah!". 2) Classification varies by individual; to present a coherent whole, not everyone can be an editor. This is why published collections of works have editors: to apply a uniform standard. 3) Disinformatoin is not discernable from information. Consider a dictionary created via a wiki: o Some people could order their entries by length, while others could order them alphabetically; o Is the Schlossen before or after the character "S", lexically? o Who checks the facts? o Copyright assignmnet (I guess you could "shrink wrap" this). > Good comments could be properly classified and incorporated into > the text as the maintainers have time. So you need an editor. I guess you are suggesting that they would be incorporated into the handbook itself? > On the other hand, I *can* see that it might be a non-trivial > project to integrate the documentation system with a web > comment system such that the two do not interfere with each other. A web comment system will interfere. It can't help it. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message