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Documentation strategies
EDIT : the thread where this discussion started can be found here :- http://board.jdownloader.org/showthr...t=17836&page=2
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True, but new search technologies can mine the immense amount of information/knowledge hidden in those forums. Last edited by remi; 28.06.2010 at 13:55. Reason: indicated starting thread |
#2
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And the WHOLE POINT of a wiki is that it's EASY to update, by users, not just developers. You notice something is wrong or incomplete, you click "Edit" and fix it, and it's done. Quote:
And in any case, that's not happening here, and never will. Quote:
Which would be much more tedious than just putting the latest and correct information in the wiki. If you don't know the program, how can you decide what is correct and what is irrelevant? If you do, why not just put it in the wiki so the next person can find it instead of having to sift through thousands of old posts? Quote:
Have you ever used Wikipedia, or any wiki? You seem to discount the whole concept in favour of some kind of AI data mining. Perhaps you have an example of such a system in action that I can see what you're talking about? |
#3
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One of the most promising implementations I've found a few months ago is OntoWiki. There probably are many more such initiatives. Thanks for all your interesting remarks and questions. Note that I don't like the term AI, because the term "intelligence" has never been clearly defined. |
#4
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@ Remi,
Since you dropped the project, it is not relevant here and now. @ Gweilo, Remi is quite familiar with WikiText. What he was discussing was not realistic for this project, but is not data mining, but the opposite. We are in serious need a Wiki editor. If you are interested, please contact support@jdownloader.org. |
#5
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And the people who might "volunteer" to do documentation aren't allowed to. No, I really don't think this would work, even if the software to do it existed. The SVNs are too cryptic to be helpful to users, and don't explain how to use new features at all. The forum is full of questions and sometimes partial answers, and much outdated information. |
#6
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#7
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Some projects and product development teams are suffering from scope creep and poorly defined or unclear requirements. A quality process can completely eradicate all these problems. There exist several governance frameworks with documented levels of process and organisation maturity that can be measured and as a consequence, managed. Quote:
Programmers like programming, let them program. Authors like writing documentation. Let them write documentation. Architects like to design models, etc. By specialisation and clear separation of responsibilities you'll increase the professionalism of the software development team. Just apply the 50 years old Object Oriented method to a software development team. Quote:
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#8
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In any case, no point telling me, you have to tell the devs if you want to institute this. Quote:
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It seems that someone created the original documentation framework, including the wiki, and did an excellent job of it. But since then, for the last couple of years anyway, it has been neglected. I never bother to look there myself any more, 90% of links to the wiki are stub pages with no information. Quote:
99% of posts here will be of no value to anyone a week later. It's mostly ephemeral bug reports, and random comments pro and con various things. The only forum that might be an exception is the reconnect forum; and that really should be translated into 1) the script database in the program and 2) the wiki. It seems the scripts included in the program have not been updated for a very long time. |
#9
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I believe 80% of the replies I write are based on answers and issues I find in jD's board. I admit that I'm using better (more or less semantic) search techniques. |
#10
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Good luck with that. |
#11
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Look at Wikipedia. Anyone can write and edit articles and still, the quality of these articles is high compared to the articles in expensive encyclopaedia written by paid experts. As I said before, any process can be enforced. Management just needs to define the process. Developers who don't follow the rules, are excluded or can't contribute to the product. Professional people will understand it, amateurs not. This will increase professionalism and automatically attract better developers. A good professional doesn't want to be associated with a team of amateurs. Quote:
Why and how would I provide support if there wouldn't be an interesting support forum? There are many people with a natural talent for authoring and I'm sure they can be found among jD's customers. I never try to enforce anything, because I'm not one of jD's managers. I only try to give advice (and hope it's understood). A discussion like this helps a lot. |
#12
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The people who are now allowed to write documentation, the "devs", are clearly not interested in doing it. And they refuse to let anyone else participate. Thus the current situation. Doesn't matter how many other open source projects are shining beacons in this regard, JD is not. I know nothing about jD's management process, but again it's clear from the results that they place a very low priority on documentation, that no one is enforcing anything in this regard. And I know all about Wikipedia, I've been editing articles there for years. Which is why it's so frustrating to see jD's wiki stagnating. Quote:
And I still think that a forum is not and never can be used as primary documentation. It can stimulate discussion and provide material, but the basic difference is that a forum is dialogue. Documentation is not. Quote:
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#13
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Open Wikis don't work in open communities without a huge amount of moderator work. Wikipedia has a special version of Wiki that contains a "discussion" ( sandbox ) page for each Wiki page. Only users who have made sufficient quality contributions in the discussion pages are given Wiki edit accounts.
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#14
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Anyone who wants an editor's account can get one just by choosing a username and password. You may be thinking of "Administrator" accounts. One has to be complete jerk to have an account suspended, and then you can just get another one as easily. It does not take a "huge amount of moderator work". The main problem is spammers. (Since you won't have explosive issues like Palestine to create edit wars.) In any case, if you made membership of this forum with a (small) minimum number of posts as the qualification, that would pretty much eliminate spammers. (I wouldn't leave editing completely open to any anonymous user, that is asking for it.) Some wikis have a captcha before any edit is confirmed, even if you're signed in. An administrator can roll back every edit a user has made in one operation if a spammer did get in and mess up lots of pages. And discussion pages are a normal wiki feature; at least I see them in every wiki I've used (not just the original Wikipedia). Those aren't sandbox pages, sandboxes are in the user space, outside the normal name space and used for preparing articles and experimenting with formatting, etc. Last edited by Gweilo; 28.06.2010 at 05:27. |
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