Re: [gentoo-dev] Projects and simple guides

[Brian Harring]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:30:16PM +0000, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 12:54 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > > We could start a public wiki displaying all herds and projects. It would
> > > be great to add some low level docs, herds/project goals, ideas and so.
> > > Even the users could be allowed to edit and share information.
> >
> > Anything like that will need to be approved by the GDP and a GLEP.
>
> Are you sure?  The new metastructure makes it perfectly clear that
> "competing" projects are okay.  The GDP does not have a monopoly on
> documentation, only on what gets published through the /doc URLs on
> www.g.o.

Would like to see GDP reiterate this view actually, since I've a 
distinct memory last time I asked in irc about it I got an opposite 
answer from them.

Regardless, (imo) it's already been laid out why guideXML'ifying 
everything doesn't totally work.  Three reasons...

A) bit of work required just to jot down a quick list of "this is 
broke, fix it" that's going to be thrown out 2 weeks down the line.

B) guideXML requires actual vcs/shell access to commit the changes.  
Portage group relies fairly heavily on non-dev help to keep things 
going (throw cookies at antarus and zmedico, since they're the ones I 
speak of).  Yes (generally speaking) non-devs will be minted at some 
point as devs if they've put in the effort, but there _is_ a sizable 
delay built in, thus no vcs/shell till after we've deemed they're 
going to be around for the long haul.

C) delay in material commits to vcs actually hitting the web.  Kind of 
hard discussing in irc what needs to be done and having the list 
that's being built up delayed due to cvs up reasons- yes this seems 
minor, but it results in people writing up crap text/html pages 
temporarily for the need, then dumping it into docs.  Extra effort, 
I'd rather just modify the list in situ.

Basically... docs route maintains the artificial barrier between devs 
and non devs, which bluntly, is stupid.  If someone is contributing 
work, they're contributing work, as long as it doesn't suck I'm going 
to use their work regardless of whatever we've deemed them gentoo 
wise.

Yes, for portage docs we have to lock sizable chunks of it down, but 
that is locking it down to the groupping of portage devs- both gentoo 
dev and non-gentoo dev.

Note also I'm speaking mainly from a developmental angle- I'm not 
necessarily advocating that _non_ developmental docs be wikified, 
although there are pros to doing that.

~harring