From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 12 17: 2:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1A8D937B719 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:02:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 52539 invoked by uid 100); 13 Mar 2001 01:02:45 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15021.29109.287302.175380@guru.mired.org> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:02:45 -0600 To: "Doug Young" Cc: "Mike Meyer" , "Duke Normandin" <01031149@3web.net>, "David Johnson" , , Subject: Re: documentation issues generally In-Reply-To: <00f501c0ab57$0cf59760$0200a8c0@apana.org.au> References: <046701c0ab3c$c4a66300$847e03cb@apana.org.au> <15021.23142.119090.401764@guru.mired.org> <00f501c0ab57$0cf59760$0200a8c0@apana.org.au> X-Mailer: VM 6.89 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Doug Young types: > > The way to deal with that is, of course, to submit improved > > documentation to them. They seem both responsive when it comes to > > adding submissions from other people, and appreciative of receiving > > them. They are more responsive and more appreciative if you mark the > > submissions up properly, as that leaves less work for them to do. But > > their markup language is easier than modern HTML, and lots of people > > have learned that. > I lurked in the docs list for while but eventually gave it away after > finding that at least 99% of the postings were in some weird language. In other words, you never even bothered trying. I've never read the docs list. I don't want to read about writing docs, I want to provide better docs to help people use FreeBSD, and cut down on the questions on -questions. I believe I've succeeded in doing that. > > Have you tried submitting something in that format? If not, what did > > you base this conclusion on? As indicated above, my experience > > submitting things has been pretty good. > I wasn't able to figure out anything about the spoken language (terminology) > used by the docs folk, let alone the programming language. That stuff is so > daunting that I'm not surprised that the operators of the various > "user-friendly" > sites haven't succeeded in penetrating the docs inner circle. I haven't "penetrated the docs inner circle". After all, if you want to get something done, you get a lot farther *doing* it than talking about it. See the handbook entry about bikesheds at . > Trying to use the man pages to learn FreeBSD is like trying to > use Websters to learn english. I'd expect the results to be mind > numbing in either case. > Exactly .... however that doesn't stop the experts yelling "RTFM" at people If the person appears to have a clue but doesn't seem to have read the appropriate manual, RTF *which* M is a perfectly valid response. If they don't have the clue, the RTFF or RTFH is more appropriate. If the answers don't exist there, I write them. Then I PR them, so that I can shout RTF[MFH] at people who haven't. > > The bottom line is that FreeBSD is a an open source volunteer > > project. "Volunteer" means that nothing gets done unless someone steps > > up to do it. "Open Source" means anyone who wants to has the > > information they need to do that. If you think something in FreeBSD > > sucks, you can fix it, so just do it. > I have ample experience with volunteer organizations .... Apana is such a > beast :) > Its effectively a non-profit / hands on internet training & access provider > with > some 1000 members across OZ. Something like 50 are on one or more of the > regional or national management committees and they are the only ones who > do anything .... the bulk of the 200 odd permanent & 700 odd dialup members > just want a cheap ISP that never breaks (at least the FreeBSD systems keep > going where the linux / AppleMac / Windows ones don't) So when something about Apana sucked, did you fix the problem, or just talk about fixing it? http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message