[CentOS-docs] New User Wishes to Contribute

Scott Robbins scottro at nyc.rr.com
Thu Oct 1 20:06:16 UTC 2009


On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 11:26:40AM -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Phil Schaffner wrote:
> 
>     ...
> > P.S. Also develop a thick skin.  :-)  This could be a proving-ground for
> > technical writers in-training, and the constructive criticism can
> > sometimes be a bit heavy, but it is generally well-intended.
> 
> As one of the lead mosquito's [1], I resemble that remark

(One pictures Russ bowing to the audience here.)


> 
> Seriously, to me, I've been thinking about it the source of my 
> concern for the last couple of weeks, and the tension comes 
> down to 'core' v 'adjunct' and has a reasonably simple 
> resolution -- split the two, and put all non-core material in 
> a 'projects.centos.org' sub domain
> 

After the last flame go round, I communicated with the head of the Arch
Wiki, asking how they filtered content and so on. 

They kindly replied, saying that what had happened was this.  First,
there were three and only three people who basically redid the whole
wiki.  Then, they were burnt out and gave the task this this person.
(The one with whom I was corresponding).  I think that is part of it,
one, or at most 3 (more or less like-minded) people making the
decisions. 

To overly simplify, one esteemed member might feel that one should just
put the steps for installing program X on CentOS, and once the yum
install is done (or whatever little tweaks have to be made afterwards),
the user should then be sent to program X's website.

Someone else, equally esteemed (in both cases, having earned their
esteem by merit--use of esteemed here is not sarcastic), feels that the
article should then tell the newcomer what to do with their new
program--perhaps because program X's website is outdated, or overly
complex, or for whatever reason.  

So, the author of the article gets caught between two esteemed people,
wondering, perhaps, if they made a mistake.   Meanwhile, it makes the
rest of us who view the drama, far less apt to even consider offering
an article to the CentOS wiki.

So, Russ' suggestion most certainly has merit, if it could stop this
situation. I think section that actually tells you
what to do with something after installing it will get far more traffic,
but  that's as may be. 

<further useful content snipped--if you didn't read it the first time,
you're unlikely to read it now.>   :)


-- 
Scott Robbins
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