[documentation] Contributors to docs need more public recognition

[Michelle Cox]

I'm just replying in general to the thread... In a hotel about to leave so
no time for a long response. But I wanted to say that I always hated having
my pages be anonymous. I don't do much editing of others' and when I do
write a page it tends to take a lot of work and not having my name on it is
discouraging. I saw all the arguments in the thread and wondered if anyone
thought of simply having unlinked names? That would make it harder for
random support emails while still giving credit.

Michelle

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Steve Dondley <sdondley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Someone reverted some documentation I submitted at
> http://drupal.org/node/262422 which removed a credit attributed to
> myself and others for writing the documentation. I specifically placed
> the credit in there to point out a bad oversight on the part of d.o.
> which is that documentation writers receive little to no public
> recognition for their work.
>
> Giving public recognition to contributors will work to move people out
> of the "user" category and into the "contributor" column for a few
> reasons:
>
> 1) It will cater to people's ego (yup, we all got 'em) to see their
> names in lights.
> 3) Most contributors seek karma. The only way to obtain karma is to give
> credit.
> 4) They might feel not sharing their talents while others freely share
> theirs.
> 5) It reminds them that there are real people behind all the work at
> d.o. and that it doesn't just magically appear for them.
>
> Currently, you have to be a registered user and logged into view the
> revisions. Even when you are logged in, the revisions tab is barely
> clicked and only by those actually maintaining the documents.
>
> With this in mind, I recommend the following:
>
> 1) A block down the side to give public recognition to all those who
> have contributed to the documentation (maybe sorted by the number of
> revisions).
> 2) A link at the top of the block to the list of revisions with an
> encouragement for user to click there to admire the hard work of
> others.
>
> I think this is a modest change that hopefully won't take a lot of
> effort. I think the payoff would be big.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
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>
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