I'll reply to the OP as well. In time. Paul W. Frields wrote:
This is software, nothing makes sense to most people. Computers are complex and strange devices. Simple does not exist and never has.On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 01:47:32AM -0800, Karsten Wade wrote: [...a lot more than this, snip...]There is nothing about the current scm2web auto-publish system that a few tool changes can't fix, but we're tired and under-staffed for supporting a one-off, NIH content system. Rather than teach its arcana to more people, I'd rather ditch it and move on.Your previous posts are the clearest statements about Docs status in recent memory. We just want people to be able to contribute meaningfully in a way that makes sense to them.
"zero barrier" - This is a completely false assumption. I had to learn wiki markup, it took me weeks. I still go back to the mediawiki help section because it is not simple and straight forward. Easy for me is NOT the same as easy for others. There is a barrier to entry involved in every aspect of a documentation project. No one just wakes up in the morning and instantly knows how to write in English either. Stop assuming everyone has so much background knowledge.* The wiki allows everyone to contribute with zero barrier to entry. Write and publish immediately. Since anyone can write anything there, caveat emptor.
Again, easy for you is not the same as easy for everyone. You, like me most likely, have a strong background in computers and you have been using them for several years. Most people's experience with "text editors" is Microsoft Word anything else is complex and foreign.* A CMS with an easy editor would basically be the equivalent of "a wiki you can trust just a bit more," because there's an editorial staff dedicated to it by virtue of it being the "official" documentation site.
"[dedicated] editorial staff " - Where are these editors coming from? At the moment we are struggling to keep the contributers and writers we have. Where are these (skilled and) dedicated editors coming from? Have they been lurking around waiting for a chance to edit for several years?
An experiment which is generating a lot of email unproductively. Can I ask this "is this getting any new documentation written?" Editing is a colossal waste of time without any actual documents in a completed state, ready for editing. This entire discussion is a waste of time.It might be important to note that the CMS is really an experiment, something to try that we really haven't done yet. If it doesn't work, the natural fall back might be to abandon all the editorial mumbo-jumbo and simply concentrate solely on the wiki from there on out. That's a bridge that can be crossed later too.
My 0.05AUD of rage. I'm angry because the present process is rubbish. Getting things published on fp.org is near impossible. Until this process has less gates and walls hindering every attempt at pushing good documentation into fedora I am keeping my upstream work with the project sites(libvirt.org, ovirt.org, etc) who make it easy to publish documents and don't waste my time.And of course, this is just my $0.02 as a Docs contributor. A lot of the above is pure hogwash until (and unless) the next Docs leader agrees.
My vote on this matter is don't add to the present quagmire but to tear down the walls and free up fedora project. Any other upstream website is simpler to publish to than fedoraproject at the moment.
Chris (Tsagadai)