[drupal-docs] authors and time stamp (was: Some pointers)

[Charlie Lowe]

Boris wrote,

 > Also, I'm going to harp on this again, and ask other people to test it
 > -- edits to book pages where you don't *manually* change the
 > author/timestamp don't show up in the tracker on Drupal.org. This
 > *only* happens on Drupal.org, and I think it is because of some local
 > hacks to the "maintain books" permission (since, otherwise, anyone
 > would be able to use the "outline" function on any content, which is
 > what we briefly saw when it was launched).

For the time being, I'd turn off the author and time stamp via the theme 
config. Neither having the original author or the one who posted the 
update is more accurate than the other.

Note that the Wikipedia does not list the first or current author; in a 
community authored text, that's not as important. In fact, I think it's 
actually better not to list the "author" as the "owner" of a particular 
piece of text; rather, maintain a "contributor" list. In other words, 
the notion of "contributors" reflects the community effort of a 
wiki-like text. And to list contributors for a given page of the text, 
they all need to be listed since the contribution of each is important. 
Not make a choice between the first or the most recent.

Eventually, the handbook would be better off still if it could display a 
date created and last revision date.  That's pretty useful to users. And 
even to handbook contributors since it's a good indicator of when a 
piece of text might need to be reviewed and updated. Something to 
consider for later on.

Charlie