[documentation] Open editing/limiting creation?

[Angela Byron]

On 11/6/08 10:25 PM, Addison Berry wrote:
> So, for now, I'm thinking about having a "holding" book. Basically we
> could let people create new pages, but they would not get to choose
> the location and it would go into a new book for this purpose. (We
> would completely restrict the ability to choose a parent for folks
> that edit as well, if they aren't on the docs team, so that people
> don't create, then move.) I guess I'm thinking of a published
> moderation queue. Then doc team and site maintainers could check the
> book regularly, quickly deleting test and spam. We can assess good
> book pages and place them appropriately. While they are "holding" they
> will still be accessible to search and to authors who wish to improve
> the page. Now I haven't thought it all through but I just wanted to
> posit the idea and see what folks think - good, bad, different ideas.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm normally Ms. No Barriers to 
Contribution. This is a very good compromise suggestion.

However. We should also think about "what if?" for create book page 
permissions globally locked down to only docs team members.

This would offer several benefits:

1. No more spam/test pages appearing in the getting started guide, which 
is most peoples' first impressions of Drupal's documentation. Not cool. 
Of course, your proposal would deal with this too, but it requires code.

2. Docs team members have a good sense of what books are available and 
where things go, because they have their heads in this all the time. New 
users typically don't, so they'll stick stuff in a totally different 
section or duplicates pages that already exist. Requiring non-docs team 
members to add an issue for pages they'd like to add, with the text of 
the page in there, would allow docs team members to review new additions 
and head these situations off at the pass (oh, actually this page 
already exists at X. Why not edit that so that it includes the nice 
clarifications you have here?). In this way it would sort of be like the 
patch contributor / module maintainer roles we have with development 
projects.

3. With editing open to anyone, there is no longer a big incentive for 
joining the docs team, I don't think. While the docs team at the moment 
is a powerhouse of awesomeness, over time people get busy with things, 
and it's important to constantly have an influx of new blood. So making 
a "Ok, we trust you enough based on your edit contributions to give you 
create page rights now" thing might be a nice way to reward those who 
are doing a great job.

Mind you, I've obviously had my head in a totally different space the 
past few months, so I could be wildly off base.

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