maria-docs team mailing list archive

[Shaun McCance <shaunm@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2011-11-28 at 17:09 -0500, Peter Lavin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I used to subscribe to the view that stubs are "an easy way for
> contributors to cherry pick work".
>                      
> About four years ago as a MySQL employee I was involved in setting up
> and contributing to the 'MySQL User Guide' at
> http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_User_Guide. I just did a quick
> review of that wiki and don't see a single element added to the
> original content. Not terribly encouraging.

Sorry, I didn't mean that to imply that I think stubs alone will bring
in contributors. They won't. They're just one way (of many) to provide
a TODO list for contributors you're otherwise bringing in.

That said, a page like this isn't at all encouraging:

http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_User_Guide_Part_V_Using_the_MySQL_APIs

There's a serious risk of having too much outline and not enough real
content. I wouldn't even know where to begin on that page. There's no
complete sections to use as a model. There's no notes to contributors
about what's expected in each section. (Yes, I intentionally picked
the most egregious page. Other pages are better.)

So, yeah, stubs take work to make them less off-putting, especially
in always-published content.

--
Shaun