Re: Uscan: watch and changelog
On Sunday, 31 March 2024 15:31:36 CEST c.buhtz@posteo.jp wrote:
>
> Don't write and explain such things in emails. Save your time and
> resources. Write it into the wiki just one time and then you can link
> to it. You wrote it. I won't copy and paste your stuff. Ladies and
> Gentlemen please do edit your own wiki pages yourself. You are the
> experts here. I am not.
I agree broadly with these sentiments.
> This attitude is also one of the reasons why the wiki is in such a bad
> shape.
I somewhat agree with this, although it is actually why documentation is in
such bad shape across the entire industry, not just the Debian Wiki. However,
I sympathise with developers that there are only so many hours in the day,
too, and that they are often tasked with getting working code out of the door,
condemning supposedly optional activities like testing and documentation to
perennial neglect.
I sympathise less with the school of development where everything is thrown
over the side, redone with little benefit to everyone, and then the developers
claim that they didn't have time to document anything, not least because they
are about to go through the same performance all over again.
> Otherwise just delete the whole wiki. That would be an increase in
> the quality of Debians documentation. In its current state it is
> embarrassing and it harms the project called Debian.
I don't agree and I am evidently not the only one. There have been situations
where the only usable documentation I could find was in the Debian Wiki.
> Debian is not a hobby. Doing FOSS shouldn't be an excuse for not taking
> responsibility.
Well, it should be more than a hobby, and it is indeed a job for some people.
To upgrade it from hobby to job involves money, and that would definitely be
an incentive for people to "take responsibility". Otherwise, nobody should
believe that they can set people's work priorities: that is the job of the
boss in an actual employment relationship.
> I tried. But it seems I am the only person caring for new contributors
> and how the read documentation. I am tortured with man pages and links
> to out dated documentation (e.g. "New maintainers guide").
I certainly care about it. Did you find my previous message about uscan
helpful? I don't maintain any of these tools, but I am willing to share my
experiences in order to evolve a reasonable consensus about how these tools
might be used, eventually providing concise, usable documentation that would
help newcomers quickly become productive.
> The situation is not healthy to me. So I need to stop from here with
> fixing other peoples documentation.
I think that you can make a difference, so don't stop trying to do something
about it.
Paul
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