[documentation] Contributors to docs need more public recognition

[Joshua Brauer]

I tend to agree with Angie's assessment here. First off I certainly  
agree with the bit about not wanting people to email me for support  
and that would be a big reason I'd stay away from docs. I was reminded  
of this recently when a member of the docs team was harassed on their  
own site for trying to help people. When it comes to recognition that  
the documentation is done by real people there seem to be two  
categories of folks. Those who "get it" and appreciate the work of the  
folks who contribute and those who "don't" and won't no matter how  
much effort we put into it.

When it comes to the idea of "maintainer-ship"  for specific pages I'm  
afraid this could have undesired results. First off it would tend to  
change the way people in the team work on documents. Instead of  
working on those that most need work I'd be inclined to work on those  
I was "responsible" for. And not wanting to spread myself too thin  
would keep that set small... But we would have some pages getting a  
lot of attention and updates and fixing up, while other, arguably more  
'important' pages get less attention. As it is now it is easy to  
change focus as the needs change. I don't feel any need to find a new  
"maintainer" when I'm no longer staying familiar enough with a page to  
be the "maintainer". Lastly this model seems similar to the "Editor"  
at dmoz.org which hasn't seemed to work all that well in my estimation  
as a user and one-time editor.

And I don't know that I accept that there's any less karma in our  
current system than there could/should/would be with a different  
system. Again part of this goes back to the motivations of the users  
of the information. Johnny Newbie will come to the site and even with  
a long list of names on each page will use the information he wants,  
possibly not even have a d.o account and get some information. Suzi  
Sitemaker will come for more information and will have an account  
after she's spent a bit of time on the site and as she starts to look  
around she'll quickly understand the contributions made by the  
documentation team to the community and will begin to understand and  
appreciate community karma and the role documentation plays in that  
process.

Josh


---------------------------
Joshua Brauer

Brauer Ranch Ltd. Co.
http://BrauerRanch.com

Making life better by making Drupal easy.

On May 25, 2008, at 10:20 PM, Steve Dondley wrote:

>> 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.
>


 From Angie's earlier post
>
> 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).
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