Re: Documentation

All, Matthew Palmer wrote:

Yup. Someone will. Be it users or someone within the PEAR project who is willing to stand guard over the gates. Call them the release master. They are the final arbiter for any package which wants to go onto the download site. ...

If anyone wants to go with "but, but, we're all volunteers! Who's going to do all this work?" I will hereby step forward and volunteer myself as the archive master. If PEAR wants to maintain quality and avoid possible legal headaches, arbiters of taste will be required somewhere.

I am new to the PEAR-DEV list, and as such have no particular authority in PEAR matters. Having said that, it seems to me that a Release Master, benevolent or otherwise, is contrary to the spirit of PEAR that I have thus perceived. Perhaps an amendment to the voting rules would be more appropriate. Something as simple as a reminder that "When voting, remember to consider the quality of docs in addition to the quality of code" would be sufficient. Perhaps a dual-track voting process could be set up, where one vote rates acceptance of code and another rates acceptance of documents, with both being necessary for acceptance to the download site. As a developer, I would prefer to see the democratic nature of PEAR preserved instead of instituting a strong-man approach when it comes to the acceptance cycle; even knowing its shortcomings, I think the voting process is a more robust and resilient method than the alternatives. I share Mr Palmer's very strong desire for useful documents to accompany code. High-quality documentation is absolutely necessary when it comes to code in general and PEAR in specific. This one issue (requiring good docs to go with good code) can only aid in the popularity and usefulness of PEAR. However, I think enforcement of the documentation requirement should be similar to the enforcement of code-acceptance requirements; that is, through the voting process, either as it currently stands or with suitable voting-rule modifications. Thank you all for your time and attention. _______________________________________________________________________ Paul M. Jones pjones@ciaweb.net http://ciaweb.net PGP & GnuPG mail accepted. Public key fingerprint: 1F2D 7B8C 3FC2 820F C593 E499 1189 4AEF AA75 78C8 What's the Phorecast? http://phorecast.org/