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On 9/3/08, Josh Saddler <nightmorph@g.o> wrote: |
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> I'm getting tired of folks bashing our docs |
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> as being "out of date", "stale", "old", or "inaccurate" just because of the |
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> displayed date of the last update. |
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What's the point saying a doc is out of date if they haven't any issue |
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with it? -- they can't have any, since the doc is up to date ;) |
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> The only possible downside I can see to this is that we might get fewer |
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> patches/bug reports from users who see an "old" date and feel the need to |
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> send in stuff based on it. Anyone know if this is a common occurrence? Is |
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> there otherwise really a *need* to display the date? |
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I think this would be a bad motivation to remove the last updated |
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information. The date show us if a doc has been updated recently or |
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not, and it's a valuable information even if there is nothing to |
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update. It represents the date of the information we put into the doc. |
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If you remove the date, you can't distinguish two versions of a (HTML) |
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document anymore. How to tell if this is the last version or a cached |
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one? |
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|
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> I look at it like this . . . sometimes, our docs are okay because they're |
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> feature-complete. They don't *need* any further updating. Just like gamin, |
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> which hasn't had an upstream release since 2007....it's because it "just |
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> works." I like to think our docs are this way, too. Mostly. :) |
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As a workaround, I would suggest to bump the date when an old document |
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has been checked, tested and certified with current material. |
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Best regards, |
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-- |
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Camille Huot |