[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

[Dan Browning]

At 09:47 PM 9/17/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 02:55:57AM +0200, Stefan Hornburg (Racke) wrote:
> > "Sturgisrally.net" <corey@sturgisrally.net> writes:
> >
> > > There are a few problems with charging for this mailing list ...
> >
> > Forget this. Charging is definitely a bad idea and it won't work
> > for sure. But IC/RedHat should be definitely more creative in
> > lining up resources from the IC developers around the world.
>
>
>I hate to hear one of my pet ideas shot down.  I'd not charge for this
>list either, but I would pay for a moderated "best of" list **version**
>of this list.  The money goes to moderator for maintaining FAQ, sending
>FAQ to common questions, killing bad threads and spam, etc...  All posts
>go to vanilla list, those subscribing to "best of" would get a human
>moderated version, only a handful of posts per day.  Ahhhhh that's the
>ticket!

Thank you CFM, You saved me from having to say it.  I agree with Racke in 
that I am not in favor of a mandatory fee, though participants may be 
encouraged to donate.  But "interchange-users-distilled" would be fine if 
there are actually enough users to subscribe, though I wouldn't be 
interested, personally.

As far as the documentation, ease of use, etc., I think IC is doing much 
better than when I started little over a year ago.  But my problem is that 
there are tons of people whining and moaning and carrying on about the 
documentation without being inspired to do anything productive about it.

It's like the people who say "XYZ is so buggy", but don't submit any sort 
of bug report or detailed description.  In my opinion, the hardest and most 
time-consuming part of fixing a bug is the case studies and background 
research, not the coding itself.

Might I encourage everyone to put more effort into it, instead of talking 
about it?  Some may feel documentation isn't their bag, but everyone can 
help with *something*.  Others may feel they don't have time to help, but 
if Mike Heins can make the time then I think that each of us should be able 
to find some time to contribute at our own level.

Besides, if the documentation/ease of use is actually so horrible, 
shouldn't it be easy to provide detailed explanations of what is 
missing/needed?

Some ways that we can help are:

1. Try to do XYZ.
2. Struggled with XYZ and list help, documentation.
3. Probably solved it, but maybe not.
4. Improve docs any of the following ways:
         4a.  write documentation yourself about how to get through XYZ
         4b.  post your rough notes to the list and ask for a volunteer (or 
RH) to integrate them into the documentation.
         4c.  Write a case study about why XYZ needs to be better documented.
         4d.  Write detailed explanation why you could not do XYZ, and how 
everything you tried in the documentation did not help.

Once detailed descriptions, case studies, user experiences, etc. are 
written then it only becomes a task of "who is going to write the docs to 
fix our very well-described problems?"  At that point, I hope volunteers 
will be inclined to step forward as technical writers (even amateurs).  At 
the very least, it lets Red Hat know what some feel is lacking in a 
specific way.

It really is quite easy to make changes, too.  If anyone really feels 
inspired to help with docs I wouldn't mind hand-holding people through 
explanation of Interchange's SDF document format and how to use diff and 
e-mail patches.

At any rate, I'm proud to be a part of this project (as are we all).  A 
nice day to all,

Dan Browning <danpb@mail.com>