Re: Tech Docs and Consultants - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Scott,

> 1) Anyone, without having been granted a membership or having made a
> huge commitment to the project, can quickly view all the code/content
> and prepare some modifications/additions to the site and submit it to
> someone who has access (through a mailing list, through a web form,
> whatever). That person must be able to quickly add it.

My experience over 3 years on 2 projects has been that any time contributions
to a content site have to be funneled through a limited list of technically
proficient and/or rights-priveleged admins, that there quickly develops a
major bottleneck in site updates.

> 2) It exists now, so the project isn't put on hold while one person
> works on recreating a CMS from scratch.

That's your best argument yet.

> That's why I want CVS. If there's something else that can provide that,
> that's fine. But I'm not seeing that in what you're suggesting.
>
> I'm not going to make any statements like "if it's not CVS, I won't be
> involved" for two reasons: (A) Because I know that wouldn't carry as
> much weight as when you say it, because I haven't been involved in the
> past. But more importantly, (B) because I feel that sort of
> statement/attitude is never a productive way of pushing a viewpoint. It
> should be about convincing people that your way has advantages, not
> throwing your weight until they give in.

No, it's just volunteerocracy.   If you want to admin techdocs, please,
volunteer!   I'll be happy to just submit articles and have you worry about
the HTML markup and getting them posted.  My statement is that "I will not
admin techdocs if it's CVS based and not CMS based."

> Once again, I feel they will be able to with CVS. As is, without CVS,
> no one can make contributions to the site except for a very few people.
> (_That's_ elitist!) I would be perfectly willing to write a techdoc
> called "Adding to the techdocs" that describes how to install and use
> TortoiseCVS on Windows, prepare a diff, and send it in. And like
> instructions on Unix and Mac OS X (I suspect they already exist in a
> million places).

Of course, this doesn't help people with HTML markup, or when the site
updaters are all on vacation, or with automated site maintainence (like link
forwarding) or any similar things.

My viewpoint is:  with a good CMS, *any* registered user can submit content at
any time.   They don't have to have software installed beyond a browser, and
they don't have to wait for an admin to read their e-mail.

> On the other hand, CVS exists now and works now. It could be set up
> tomorrow, including the mailing lists and archives and everything.

As I said, that's your most persuasive argument.  You want to do it?

--
-Josh Berkus

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