[development] book patch impact (was: taking a break)

[Peter Wolanin]

Dear Gabor,

I think there is considerable confusion about what the book patch *does* do.

I encourage everyone who is unsure at this point to look at the
summary a wrote last night and note that many people who are on the
documentation team (as I am) have supported the changes.

http://drupal.org/node/146425#comment-267769

If I wasn't convinced that these changes would substantially enhance
our ability to manage the d.o handbooks, I would not have bothered to
write the code.  If you catch me on IRC today I'd be happy to discuss
with you or anyone what's actually in the code.

-Peter

On 7/1/07, Gabor Hojtsy <gabor at hojtsy.hu> wrote:
> Let me sidetrack this thread to give some insight into why some people
> feel strong about the book patch.
>
> Dries Buytaert wrote:
> > Maybe the code freeze frenzy blinds you too?  Consider to take a fresh
> > perspective on why the actions module went in and why the book module
> > improvements haven't yet.  I'll share you my perspective ...
> >
> > I agree with parts of the book patch, and I disagree with other parts of
> > the book patch.  Regardless my disagreements, I don't think the book
> > patch is super-high priority.  Frankly, there is no harm done when the
> > book improvements don't make it into Drupal 6.
>
> "Unfortunately" how the book module works, (or not works for that
> matter) has a high impact on the community. The Drupal Handbooks, as the
> main source of information for beginners and aspiring developers alike
> is organized with this module.
>
> Just as project module has a high impact on development in the
> community, book module has a high impact on documentation. Project
> module being in the contributions repository has a good chance of being
> developed with a higher pace then book module, which is tied to the
> Drupal release cycle.
>
> By reading through the book module patch comments, it seems obvious,
> that people commenting/working on the book module improvements did not
> take Dries' concerns seriously about where the module is going to
> (although he repeated them many times), and did not (visibly)
> investigate other paths to take.
>
> Now that project module is maturing (even more so with the current
> Google Summer of Code projects), bigger problems come from lack of two
> technical solutions in the community: content and user management. These
> include organization of the handbooks and often spam (content, user)
> prevention and deletion. People take a lot of time removing spam and
> blocking spammy users and as the book module patch comments show, they
> think the UI of the current book module could be made much better for
> the handbooks.
>
> Unfortunately this only describes why the book module patch could be
> important, but does not help solving the UI problems Dries has with it.
> These are explained better in the issue though.
>
>    Issue: http://drupal.org/node/146425
>
> Gabor
>