[documentation] Contributors to docs need more public recognition

[Angela Byron]

Steve Dondley wrote:
> Great point.
> 
> Which sparks an idea: Why not give document pages  ownership like we
> do projects? Why should documentation get what amounts to 2nd class
> karma status? Might be a more comprehensive change but it could also
> be very worthwhile.

I don't like this approach, for three reasons:

1. I like the fact that right now, if I spot a typo, or a page that 
could use some general clean-up, I can just go in and fix it. I don't 
need to get "approval" from someone, because the handbook and its 
content belongs to /all/ of us, and each of the docs team members are 
all the collective caretakers of it.

2. I can't speak for others, but for me... the vast majority of the time 
when I document something in the handbook it's for two reasons: a) to 
put somewhere so that I can find it again if I ever run into it in the 
future, b) to help others do the same. If creating a handbook page meant 
I was to become personally responsible for the well-being of that page 
from now into eternity, I probably would opt instead for not writing the 
page.

3. I /really/ don't want people e-mailing me for tech support on pages 
that I've written. That would also make me opt for *not* contributing to 
the handbook. I want people posting issues to the docs queue, and for us 
all to collectively take care of things as they come up, because that a) 
takes the support burden off of people who are taking the time to write 
pages in the first place, and b) also makes all of us more well-rounded 
in our knowledge (nothing did more for my understanding of CVS than 
working with dww to clean up the CVS handbook, for instance).

---

Let's take a practical example of why I oppose a move like this.

"Clean URL support in XAMPP": http://drupal.org/node/43545.

I wrote this page initially because I had lost an hour futzing with 
getting this to work and wanted to document it quickly for future 
reference. About two weeks later, I ended up starting a new job and 
buying a Mac, after which time I never touched XAMPP again.

Over the years (http://drupal.org/node/43545/revisions), other members 
of the docs team have greatly expanded and improved this page beyond its 
initial scratchings. They never once hassled me to ask if they could 
update it; they just saw the need for improvement and went at it. This 
is a *good* thing, and as you can see, has resulted in a much better 
piece of documentation for the community.

If you had to give some sort of "credit" for this page, to whom would 
you give it? Certainly not to me; I started the page and never went back 
again (okay, once, to re-parent it). add1sun has the most revisions if 
you count raw numbers, but most of her work was around making the 
formatting nicer rather than adding technical detail. No, this is an 
example of a handbook page collectively owned, maintained, and improved 
by *the Drupal community*. It transcends ownership of any particular 
individual. And this is a great thing.

And if this page example is too trite for you, I could point to dozens 
more, including the CVS Quickstart Guide @ 
http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart which I'm pretty sure just 
about everyone has used at one point or another.

-Angie