[documentation] Proposal to open up editing rights

[Addison Berry]

Just a reminder to please give feedback to this thread by September 8.  
We've had a lot of good discussion and ideas floating around in here.  
On September 9, I'll summarize what we've got and we can figure out  
next steps, if any right now.

- Addi (add1sun)

On Aug 29, 2008, at 5:31 AM, Addison Berry wrote:

> I'll start by apologizing for the long email here but I think this
> deserves more than a few sentences. Also note that at the end I've got
> a deadline for responses of Sept. 8. ;-)
>
> So I have a proposal to put out to the team regarding opening up
> editing rights to all authenticated users on d.o. This would be a big
> change and I'd like us to really hammer this out in discussion so that
> we identify and address pitfalls ahead of time as well as possible. I
> have long been a proponent of absolutely *not* opening this up and I
> still have concerns about it, but I'd like to see what the community
> would really do with it. The Drupal community is very different now
> than it was several years ago, whether it is different in a way that
> would make open editing successful this time remains a question.
>
> Before I get to it, a bit of history:
> This has been done in the past and failed. Years ago all auth users
> were allowed to edit the handbook and there was too much vandalism and
> spam to be caught and cleaned up by the community. This is still a
> concern and not one to be taken lightly.
>
> But there are some definite points to be looked at:
> * It requires MUCH less knowledge and time to fix a typo than it does
> to author a new page. Same with rolling in comments, another common
> task that the docs team is stretched a bit thin on.
> * New users are the best poised to ferret out errors in documentation,
> but also the least likely to create new pages.
> * While the barrier to joining the documentation team is low, it is a
> barrier nonetheless, and one that is non-obvious to new users, whose
> input we need the most. I've also found that many new people just
> won't take the step to ask because they feel that it means they have a
> certain time obligation that they don't feel they can "commit" to.
>
> Some issues we will need to look at:
> * We have a mix of input formats out there and anything above Filtered
> HTML needs to be restricted for security reasons. So even if we open
> it up there will definitely be many pages that folks can't edit unless
> they join the team, particularly pages with images. We can explain
> this and make it clear what is going on but there will still be a lot
> of folks that don't read wherever we happen to explain it and will
> complain a lot. So we need to be ready for lots of forum posts/issues/
> irc pings about this unless someone has any other brilliant ideas
> about it. ;-) We should have a standard explanation written up that we
> can point people to and/or copy/paste into emails, etc.
> * We are going to get vandalism, no doubt. So the trick is to see if
> the community can actually self-maintain fairly well and keep up with
> it. The doc team in particular will need to make an extra effort to
> keep an eye on things and be as responsive as possible about reverting
> things and helping clean it up. this is the kicker and if this doesn't
> happen, then this fail. Any and all ideas about ways to help us track
> what is happen and deal with it quickly are welcome. One thing that
> comes to mind is that we do have a Recent updates page (http://drupal.org/handbook/updates
> ) and it would reduce a click if the table included a link directly to
> the revisions tab of the page in question so you could easily review
> the list, see the revision history and get a quick diff on changes.
> This would require a patch to the d.o module so I'll write up a patch
> for that either Sunday or next week.
> * Any other issues we are missing here?
>
> The idea is to try this out as a test. Here is my general plan. Help
> me shore it up:
> Open up general handbook page editing to authenticated users (since
> they can only edit Filtered HTML nodes, the Getting Started Guide and
> other more "official" resources would be off-limits) for a trial
> period of one month. Publicize what the deal is, and then assess the
> number of reversions needed, and decide if we will continue or close
> back up. We can extend the test a month at a time until we are sure of
> our decision and just keep communicating with the community about what
> the progress is. Basically, the community has asked for this and I
> want to see if we can really handle it. If it works, awesome, if it
> doesn't then this will give us some recent experience and data to
> consider when the request is raised again.
>
> So, let's talk about this on the mail list for a week or so and get
> ourselves aligned about whether to agree to the proposal or not and
> also hash out idea for how to actually deal with it. Please respond
> with your thoughts to this list by September 8.
>
> Thanks
> - Addi (add1sun)
>
> --
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