Re: Just a tiny thing

At 02:26 PM 7/27/00 -0700, Chris Adams wrote:

At 02:08 PM 7/27/00 -0700, Chris Adams wrote:

"Egon Schmid" <eschmid@php.net> wrote in message news:39809D4C.A3C23BC5@php.net...

Oh no, we need all to clean up the user annotations in the manual.

Thats

a huge problem with Open Source Software. Richard Stallman said at the LinuxDays in Stuttgart: "Microsoft don't have that problem."

This would be a very, very good thing. Right now the annotations are basically useless because there's a ton of crap for every useful

annotation.

It would seem to me that anything which reports a bug (or behaviour in

dead

versions (e.g. beta build)) or asks a question should be deleted *and* an email should be sent to the submitter reminding them that this is not a

bug

tracking system and directing them to http://bugs.php.net/ if they're

still

having problems.

Perhaps members of the QA team who have little to contribute during the actual fixing of bugs (like me!) could take a look at this after the work on the bug database is mostly complete. I'd like to be involved with that as well; I'd love to help with PHP development but I don't have enough time to really be helpful (not to mention that I'm not exactly the world's largest fan of C). Whereas I do end up looking things up in the PHP manual and noticing problems or a regular basis. Maybe we could work with the doc team to give some people editorial access for comments?

The developers have expressed doubts about giving out CVS accounts. I feel that for the annotations in the manual, editing the content by hand and submitted modified documents to the manual editors should not be too big of a hassle. Or alternately, let the doc team choose/elect/whatever someone as editor - let the editor assemble, check and commit of the changes. Alternately, the annotation system could be modified, but this would take some time.

I think a quick trip through the php-general archives and the FAQ/KB listings would turn up some knowledgeable candidates who could be trusted for this sort of thing.

I would guess that making a letter that invites people to help out on this project would be the best way to do this? Zak