[FM Discuss] scribn the bazaar

[Joshua Facemyer]

On 11/17/2009 06:25 AM, adam hyde wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 22:10 -0500, Joshua Facemyer wrote:
 >
>> Right.  That's what makes it a hard question - because ideally anyone
>> can contribute, but realistically some contributions/contributors will
>> be so poor as to destroy the content (or at least derail it) if not
>> closely monitored.
>>
>
> interesting discussion. i guess i tend to think that there is nothing
> lost by trying it open first (as we do for fm now) - keeping the pathway
> open for as many contributions as possible - and then raise the
> threshold if problems arise (so far I haven't seen any problems arise).
 >
 > one very real issue is that we don't yet really have the tools to  assist
 > this 'variable threshold' since fm is built on the premise that
 > everything is open.
 >
 > im trying to imagine the tools that might enable this...anyone have
 > thoughts on this? or do we leave this to the culture of the
 > maintainer/or book contributors to moderate this socially/culturally...
 >


My point was that it *should* be open - that ownership and openness can 
be compatible.  (I think we should make the distinction between 
effective openness, or encouraging productive participation, and 
destructive openness, or encouraging all participation, here.)  Even a 
closely monitored project can be very open.  I think FM does this nicely 
in many ways (not that things might not be done better - no implications :).

For example, Adam, you've got a specific set of ideals that you want FM 
to be, and it's important for the main contributors to participate in 
those ideals.  If this weren't the case, and you let anyone do whatever 
they wanted willy-nilly, FM would cease to be as it was intended to be.

Instead, you encourage participation (also without which, incidentally, 
FM would cease to be :) but direct the contributors to the original (or 
modified) goals that will make FM according to the ideals.  But even in 
that formation of ideals and direction, you have left things open for 
discussion/change/improvement.  I suspect, however, if someone hijacked 
FM for a different purpose, you'd defend her like a mother FM-o-saurus. 
  Or at least you'd try to persuade the hijacker to stop doing bad things.

So, to bring the point to it's conclusion, FM's ideals are both quality 
and open participation (both which should inspire the other), and we've 
already got a good start.

Jumping off from that point, I think the tools for "ownership" should 
not be distinct from the tools for "participation", and there should be 
both social/cultural tools *and* technical tools for these ends.  Of 
course, the technical tools are mainly in question here, though the 
discussion can't realistically separate them from each other.

Personally, I'd like to see (in some form or another):

Statuses/privileges for users (this doesn't have to be much of a 
hierarchical thing, just some basic things like the ability to publish, 
revert changes, etc, for those who are more involved with a manual.  And 
an override/impeachment process by contributor vote could be built in, 
if necessary, though ideally there would need be no such thing.)

Task lists that are tied to chapters/manuals and are assignable.  An 
aggregation of all pages' tasks for the manual would be nice too.

Better versioning control for easily seeing changes, comparing and 
possibly reverting.

Community discussion pages that can be used to help organize, possibly 
integrated with a wiki-type documentation structure/markup?

I know some of these things are in the works and have been discussed. 
I'm just working things out for the discussion...my temporary conclusion 
being that we may not need much more than what is already going to 
happen.  I guess, overall, the idea of maintainers is important, and 
giving them tools to easily do the things they need to make sure a 
manual stays on track - both by encouraging participation and seeing 
that the changes that are made improve quality.

JF