<div dir="ltr">Hi <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; ">Addi,</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">As a long time Member of D.O. and just a while joined the "Documentation Team"</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">I want to give my 2 Cents:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">1. Before allow full editing access to Handbooks, Member should get approved by at list 2 "Senior" member</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"> of "Documentation Team"</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">2. The new applying Member for "Documentation Team" should have a (to establish) period of D.O. membership</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"> and is not in a black list.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">3. Add to "Documentation Team" the possibility to Edit also own posting for review and or add good Posting</span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"> regarding good tech contribution to the Handbook</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Thanks for this Andi.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Cheers <br>
</span><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Addison Berry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:drupal@rocktreesky.com">drupal@rocktreesky.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I'll start by apologizing for the long email here but I think this<br>
deserves more than a few sentences. Also note that at the end I've got<br>
a deadline for responses of Sept. 8. ;-)<br>
<br>
So I have a proposal to put out to the team regarding opening up<br>
editing rights to all authenticated users on d.o. This would be a big<br>
change and I'd like us to really hammer this out in discussion so that<br>
we identify and address pitfalls ahead of time as well as possible. I<br>
have long been a proponent of absolutely *not* opening this up and I<br>
still have concerns about it, but I'd like to see what the community<br>
would really do with it. The Drupal community is very different now<br>
than it was several years ago, whether it is different in a way that<br>
would make open editing successful this time remains a question.<br>
<br>
Before I get to it, a bit of history:<br>
This has been done in the past and failed. Years ago all auth users<br>
were allowed to edit the handbook and there was too much vandalism and<br>
spam to be caught and cleaned up by the community. This is still a<br>
concern and not one to be taken lightly.<br>
<br>
But there are some definite points to be looked at:<br>
* It requires MUCH less knowledge and time to fix a typo than it does<br>
to author a new page. Same with rolling in comments, another common<br>
task that the docs team is stretched a bit thin on.<br>
* New users are the best poised to ferret out errors in documentation,<br>
but also the least likely to create new pages.<br>
* While the barrier to joining the documentation team is low, it is a<br>
barrier nonetheless, and one that is non-obvious to new users, whose<br>
input we need the most. I've also found that many new people just<br>
won't take the step to ask because they feel that it means they have a<br>
certain time obligation that they don't feel they can "commit" to.<br>
<br>
Some issues we will need to look at:<br>
* We have a mix of input formats out there and anything above Filtered<br>
HTML needs to be restricted for security reasons. So even if we open<br>
it up there will definitely be many pages that folks can't edit unless<br>
they join the team, particularly pages with images. We can explain<br>
this and make it clear what is going on but there will still be a lot<br>
of folks that don't read wherever we happen to explain it and will<br>
complain a lot. So we need to be ready for lots of forum posts/issues/<br>
irc pings about this unless someone has any other brilliant ideas<br>
about it. ;-) We should have a standard explanation written up that we<br>
can point people to and/or copy/paste into emails, etc.<br>
* We are going to get vandalism, no doubt. So the trick is to see if<br>
the community can actually self-maintain fairly well and keep up with<br>
it. The doc team in particular will need to make an extra effort to<br>
keep an eye on things and be as responsive as possible about reverting<br>
things and helping clean it up. this is the kicker and if this doesn't<br>
happen, then this fail. Any and all ideas about ways to help us track<br>
what is happen and deal with it quickly are welcome. One thing that<br>
comes to mind is that we do have a Recent updates page (<a href="http://drupal.org/handbook/updates" target="_blank">http://drupal.org/handbook/updates</a><br>
) and it would reduce a click if the table included a link directly to<br>
the revisions tab of the page in question so you could easily review<br>
the list, see the revision history and get a quick diff on changes.<br>
This would require a patch to the d.o module so I'll write up a patch<br>
for that either Sunday or next week.<br>
* Any other issues we are missing here?<br>
<br>
The idea is to try this out as a test. Here is my general plan. Help<br>
me shore it up:<br>
Open up general handbook page editing to authenticated users (since<br>
they can only edit Filtered HTML nodes, the Getting Started Guide and<br>
other more "official" resources would be off-limits) for a trial<br>
period of one month. Publicize what the deal is, and then assess the<br>
number of reversions needed, and decide if we will continue or close<br>
back up. We can extend the test a month at a time until we are sure of<br>
our decision and just keep communicating with the community about what<br>
the progress is. Basically, the community has asked for this and I<br>
want to see if we can really handle it. If it works, awesome, if it<br>
doesn't then this will give us some recent experience and data to<br>
consider when the request is raised again.<br>
<br>
So, let's talk about this on the mail list for a week or so and get<br>
ourselves aligned about whether to agree to the proposal or not and<br>
also hash out idea for how to actually deal with it. Please respond<br>
with your thoughts to this list by September 8.<br>
<br>
Thanks<br>
- Addi (add1sun)<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Pending work: <a href="http://drupal.org/project/issues/documentation/" target="_blank">http://drupal.org/project/issues/documentation/</a><br>
List archives: <a href="http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/" target="_blank">http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/</a><br>
</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Sincerely Best Regards<br>Wolf J. Zirbs<br><br>P.S.<br>You may contact me by Mobil - Handy<br>between 10am and 10pm Vienna Local Time (+43 676 9286735)<br>
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