To Wiki, or not to Wiki (was: bored with *talks* about docs)

[David Leangen <dl...@canada.com>]

> There's a huge amount you can contribute to this effort I'm sure. All it
> needs is people like you on board!

Thank you for your nice compliments. I wouldn't speak so quickly, though.
You haven't yet experienced how opinionated I really am. ;-)


> How does that sit with you?


I think you have many great ideas. My main worry is that my "vision" is just
too different, and I would likely cause more friction and discordance than
actually help the process. I suppose that I am one of those people best
suited for new projects rather than joining in projects well under way.

Also, although I have a technical background and recently have been doing
almost 100% development, my main experience is more on the business side of
things. To be blunt, the business approach is very different and so
incompatible with the scientific/engineering mindset that it is very rare
that tekkies can successfully cross over. For instance, thinking logically,
which comes oh, so naturally for us programmers, can actually do more harm
than good when dealing with people and customers. I now accept this as
"fact" though I often have trouble acting accordingly.

I say all this because I think that my way of doing things is just too
different from what would be accepted by Cocoon members. Cocoon is an
organisation made by tekkies, for tekkies.

The reason I think that your suggested approach is faulty is because it's
starting from what we already have. Well, what we already have has mostly
been developer-centric. Rather, we need to be more user-centric. The process
should be starting off with "who is the user and what does he/she/it
want/need to know?" As a concrete example, I think that we can do away with
(completely or almost completely) the "history" section. Is this useful for
understanding Cocoon, evaluating if it's worth the risk for me (assuming
we're dealing with a business, which I assume most users are) to invest my
company's time? Does this help me to get up and running? Does this answer
the concerns I have about how using Cocoon will affect my business? The
answer is "no". So the action should be "delete".


See now why I would just cause more debate than help move the project along?


Anyway, if you still want to hear about what I think, perhaps I could make a
separate wiki that gives a bit of an idea of my vision. The best that could
happen is you'll see some things you like and we'll be able to find a good
compromise. The worst that could happen is that you can decide that you
don't like my approach and politely tell me to bugger off. ;-)


WDYT?



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Suggestion: (To Wiki, or not to Wiki (was: bored with *talks* about docs))

[Yves Vindevogel <yv...@implements.be>]

Hi,

I have a little suggestion for the docs ...

Why not use the same method as the people at JBoss ?
AFAIK, their documentation is up-to-date.
They wrote down all the docs, and published them in books.  I think 
that brought in enough money to pay for writing the docs in the first 
place.

Most of us will find it a fair way to contribute financially: buy the 
book with the latest documentation.

I know some books are on the market today, I have 2 (I think), but I 
think they were not really sold by the community, AFAIK.

My 2 cents


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Re: To Wiki, or not to Wiki (was: bored with *talks* about docs)

[beyaNet <an...@jibeya.com>]

David,
that would be a good starting point. Once we have a starting point we 
can than take things from there....

regards

Andrew
On 13 Nov 2004, at 14:21, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:

> Le 13 nov. 04, à 14:59, David Leangen a écrit :
>> ...Anyway, if you still want to hear about what I think, perhaps I 
>> could make a
>> separate wiki that gives a bit of an idea of my vision. The best that 
>> could
>> happen is you'll see some things you like and we'll be able to find a 
>> good
>> compromise. The worst that could happen is that you can decide that 
>> you
>> don't like my approach and politely tell me to bugger off. ;-)
>
> Sounds good to me - showing us your vision as actual documents is 
> certainly the best, and where this happens is not really important 
> IMHO.
>
> Note that you could do it on the current wiki, for example by 
> prefixing all your page names with the same prefix to make them easily 
> recognizable. But if you prefer to create this seed elsewhere, I don't 
> see a problem.
>
> You might meet some skepticism here, mostly because there have been 
> several such experiments in the past, which have all stopped after a 
> few weeks as the initial excitement disappeared. But we're (at least 
> I'm) all ears and eyes if you can do better!
>
> -Bertrand
>


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RE: To Wiki, or not to Wiki

[David Leangen <dl...@canada.com>]

> You might meet some skepticism here, mostly because there have been
> several such experiments in the past, which have all stopped after a
> few weeks as the initial excitement disappeared. But we're (at least
> I'm) all ears and eyes if you can do better!

Well, what I and those who join me could do is make our proposal and, if it
is rejected by the Cocoon community, spin it off into a commercial-type
project.

Or something like that.

Who knows, maybe this type of work is better suited to the commercial model
to begin with...


Cheers,
Dave



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Re: To Wiki, or not to Wiki (was: bored with *talks* about docs)

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

Le 13 nov. 04, à 14:59, David Leangen a écrit :
> ...Anyway, if you still want to hear about what I think, perhaps I 
> could make a
> separate wiki that gives a bit of an idea of my vision. The best that 
> could
> happen is you'll see some things you like and we'll be able to find a 
> good
> compromise. The worst that could happen is that you can decide that you
> don't like my approach and politely tell me to bugger off. ;-)

Sounds good to me - showing us your vision as actual documents is 
certainly the best, and where this happens is not really important 
IMHO.

Note that you could do it on the current wiki, for example by prefixing 
all your page names with the same prefix to make them easily 
recognizable. But if you prefer to create this seed elsewhere, I don't 
see a problem.

You might meet some skepticism here, mostly because there have been 
several such experiments in the past, which have all stopped after a 
few weeks as the initial excitement disappeared. But we're (at least 
I'm) all ears and eyes if you can do better!

-Bertrand