On 7 August 2011 21:58, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Ross Gardler <[email protected]> > wrote: >> On 6 August 2011 22:11, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: >>> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 3:14 AM, Jean Hollis Weber <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>>> On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 10:22 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: >> >> ... >> >>> Maybe I'm too skeptical, but do we really have thousands of non core >>> project members dropping in for minutes at a time, adding information >>> on the architecture of OOo? And build instructions? Looking at the >>> history of these pages, it looks more like this is core dev-enabling >>> information that should be part of the core project website. >> >> If there is *one* person who is unable to make that first, simple >> contribution then there is *one* person who the project cannot move >> from user to committer. Sustainable open source (managed under the >> Apache Way) is about maximising the number of people who can >> contribute. That is not the same as maximising the number of people >> who do contribute (although the latter will usually be a side product >> of the former). >> > > Perhaps my point was not clear. I was saying that for some areas of > the project, where it is important to publish authoritative, PPMC > approved information, that this should be CRT for committers, but RTC > for others. That doesn't mean that we need to raise initial barriers > for contributors. It should be very easy to submit a contribution. > But it does mean that for some areas -- code being an obvious one -- > we don't allow non-committers to change the repository directly. > Contributors are mediated via the review and approval of committers. > In parallel with that RTC cycle, we proactively identify potential new > committers.
Fair enough. But remember documentation writers are very often not technical. How do we minimise the barriers for them? > There is nothing in what I said that suggests we should not encourage > contributions. I only said that in some areas we should be careful to > establish PPMC oversight via the normal means. Yes, which is why I and others are suggesting: - an open wiki for user contributed documentation - a closed wiki (the CMS?) for official documentation (which accepts patches) - a process for moving appropriate content from the former to the latter - a process for handling patches for the latter Ross
