On 04/07/2009, at 5:21 AM, randomcoder1 wrote:
Guess what , I'm in IT for several years now also
, and I like writing
docs , no matter if it's a documenting my own code or
documenting the functionality that I'm implementing , keeping an
agenda
of what I did and what I still have to do.
It's called getting organized. If I don't do this it's going to get
out
of control sooner or later.
I like to write docs because I am sure that after 6 months from now
if I
look at my stuff it would make no difference if it was foreign code
or my own code.
So maybe your question should be "Ever met a very good developer who
likes writing doc?"
The answer I suspect is in the affirmative.
Good for you, but that's not really what we're talking about.
>>> and a lot of the docs have never been read
by a developer. That
>>> being
>>> said, using FlaggedRevs we might be able to deliver more solid docs
>>> on
MW.org by flagging docs at like two levels. One could be like
>>> a basic
>>> "has been looked over for glaring errors and basic readability"
and
>>> a second could be "has been thoroughly reviewed and is considered
>>> the doc on the given subject."
>>>
>> Perhaps we could start by getting developers to thoroughly review
>> documentation?
With no way of planning that review, nor of co-ordinating with other
developers to make sure everything's been at least somewhat looked at,
there's no point in doing so.
>>
>> You're proposing a technical solution to a people problem. The
>> problem
>> is not that the site can't display the fact that a developer vouches
>> for the quality of documentation. The problem is that there are no
>> processes for getting developers to review documentation and vouch
>> for
>> it.
>
> To further expand on my original statements, I'm not suggesting the
> developers
> are the only ones with in-depth knowledge of how Mediawiki works.
> There are
> certainly other members of the community we can trust to handle
> this task as
> well. I'm looking at this primarily as tools to aid in fixing a
> problem. Of course
> without work on part of document writers/reviewers, this won't go
> anywhere.
Giving some indication of what's been checked and is authoritative and
what isn't is generally a good idea. I don't document much on
MediaWiki.org, but I sure don't mind checking over existing
documentation.
--
Andrew Garrett
Contract Developer, Wikimedia Foundation
agarrett(a)wikimedia.org
http://werdn.us