On 2022-10-01 at 09:44, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote: > On Saturday, October 01, 2022 06:10:48 AM The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2022-10-01 at 05:46, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: >> >>> Debian-user is a mailing list provided for support for Debian >>> users, and to facilitate discussion on relevant topics. > >> I therefore reiterate my suggestion, from what I think was one of >> the first times (a previous version of?) this FAQ was (re)posted, >> that some versioning information be attached to - and posted along >> with each copy of - this FAQ. > > +1 > > And I would expand the suggestion to add "revision marks" (ideally in > the left margin) of the changed sections. > > After all, many of us are used to using (word)diff or similar. That's about showing what the changes are (when there are any), which is an entirely separate and much larger / more-complicated matter. For example: as soon as you've had more than one change in the entire history of the document, you need to start considering what the previous version against which you're showing differences is. If you try to do it against all of them, it very quickly becomes unwieldy; if you try to do it against just the previous most recent update, then people have to track that down to understand what the context of the changes was, and still need to read the updated document to understand those changes in full context. It can still be worth doing - typically against the last formally published version, preferably with a "commit message" type of notice along with each such version - for larger documents, EULAs and TOS notices and privacy policies the like. But for something like this FAQ, the document is small enough that I don't mind reading it again when there have been changes, as long as I don't need to reread it *every time* just *in case there have been changes*, without any good way to tell whether or not there have (aside from tracking down the previous posting and comparing for myself). As such, this request is limited to the specific point of having some type of versioning attached to the FAQ document. Having a list of "what changed since the previous version" available somewhere (e.g. in the header section of the document) might be a nice benefit, but for a document this short I think it'd probably be overkill. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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