[documentation] Contributors to docs need more public recognition

[Steve Dondley]

> 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.

Good points. My error was throwing around the word "ownership" over
pages. Bad choice of words because it's not really what I had in mind.
Perhaps "maintainer" would be better. "Ownership" conjures up all the
scenarios you mention.

So let me clear it up. I didn't mean to suggest that document
maintainers would have the same restrictive gatekeeper role as a
module maintainer. Instead, I would envision someone who calls
themselves a "maintainer" of a page, a role they can choose to
relinquish at any time. Each page could have multiple maintainers but
anyone could still edit the page. Some pages might have zero
maintainers until someone decides to step up. Having a document
maintainer is just a way for a person to publicly declare, "I'm
interested in taking an active role in improving and maintaining the
quality of this document." This would be someone who wants to get
notified or asked for advice on what's on that page. Nothing more than
that. They could easily drop out of that role anytime they wanted.

So what's the difference between that and what we have now? Well, in
my mind, the big difference between a "maintainer" and a "contributor"
is that a "maintainer" is willing to take requests directly from the
community and do the contributing on behalf of others. But, again,
nothing would ever give the maintainer the power over others to
contribute. They would just be someone you could defer to.



>
> ---
>
> 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
> --
> Pending work: http://drupal.org/project/issues/documentation/
> List archives: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/
>



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