[ic] Pee-Poor Documentation Rant

Jon Jensen interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Mon Jan 14 13:12:01 2002


On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Ryan Hertz wrote:

> At 12:04 PM 1/14/02 -0500, Honest to Goodness wrote:
>
> >We are here on this list energetic, vital and knowledgable. How about we
> >start our own doc project from right here?
>
> It has been tried before, in fact, I'm sure the mailing list still
> exists.  I think it was also used in the most recent RedHat re-write of the
> docs as some people proofread and contributed changes/suggestions.
>
> Not that your idea is a bad one, you just may find the results disappointing.

I would say that every effort to improve the docs has paid off in direct
proportion to the amount of work put in. Ryan is referring to May/June
2001, when a few people joined a separate mailing list to briefly beta
test the upcoming release of revised docs. Nobody volunteered to write a
big, new document, or better organize the existing stuff, but they did
point out and submit fixes for formatting problems, omissions,
inconsistencies, and errors. Everyone benefits from every little
improvement to the docs, so why not contribute whatever you can?

Jon