[drupal-docs] Next steps

[Charlie Lowe]

bryan kennedy wrote:
> 
> 1. Set up an alternate un-promoted set of books on drupal.org that will 
> eventually move over to /handbook and become the new handbook once they 
> are ready for prime time.  This will require one of the admins creating 
> a couple new categories for our books to live in.

-1

Two problems:

1) link rot
2) if by "un-promoted" you mean "un-published," I just had some 
experience with Drupal 4.5 with this. In 4.5, book pages which are not 
yet published do not show up in the "Parent" pull down menu. If this 
still works this way in 4.6, it would be impossible to organize the 
pages as they were created.

I believe others have proposed previously that we reauthor the pages on 
a wiki. We can then move them over as completed by replacing existing 
pages where possible (to prevent link rot). Cutting and pasting would 
not be that hard, and indeed, would allow for a rolling update of the 
handbook as sections are revised rather than waiting until everything is 
completed.


> 
> 3.  Begin aggregating documentation efforts from multiple sources on 
> drupal.org (handbook and forums), dev.bryght.com, CivicSpace, Purdue's 
> OSDDP.

+1

However, we have some documentation under development with OSDDP that 
would be useful to Drupal site administrators, yet it won't work for the 
OSDDP guide due to formatting, context specific applications, etc. For 
example, one student group is working on this documentation for the wpa 
council

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~atstone/drupalstories/drupalstories.htm

The final version will be CC licensed, so someone would be able to 
revise that text with their own screenshots.

Perhaps the solution for documentation like this is to provide a section 
at the bottom of a relevant drupal handbook pages with links to other, 
relevant documentation such as this.

> 
> 4. This isn't really a step, just a note.  We should try to maintain 
> author credits where appropriate.  If you completely re-write a 
> document, give yourself authorship, but if you just make some edits to 
> a page to get it up to 4.6 snuff, then don't assign yourself as author.

-1

There's an automated system for this already using profiles. Meanwhile, 
it would be inconsiderate and inappropriate, I think, to list the 
revising author and not list all the other authors who have worked on 
the text. Attribution is best left, IMHO, to a listing in the copyright 
and licensing section.