Who are our Authors? Who is going to write all this?

Site Feedback and Other Questions
1

We could simply clone the OpenWrt wiki. We're doing this with the Table of Hardware, because that's pretty reliable data. But copy/pasting the rest of the OpenWrt site would miss a major opportunity to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, and make LEDE better. My questions:

  • How do we encourage people to add new (correct/updated) information to the LEDE site?
  • To what extent do we permit/allow/encourage/discourage people to copy/paste articles?
  • What "guarantees" do we want authors of articles to provide?
    • Must they assure us that every word is accurate?
    • Should we even expect them to have tried the steps they write about?
    • For example, I have not personally verified the Flashing Instructions. But I would do that if we decide that we need that level of assurance.

I ask this question because I assume that we (the core team working on the site today) don't want to write all the documentation...

2

If you're making a definitive HOWTO on something I would think you have built and tested whatever you're writing about in real life. A lot of the "good" articles on the old wiki are mini projects in there own right. So if I'm following along 10+ steps to build a thing I really want it to work at the end.

I would like to have LEDE revisions/releases are tagged on every major revision to an article like this.

3

[quote="richb-hanover, post:1, topic:186, full:true"]- How do we encourage people to add new (correct/updated) information to the LEDE site?[/quote]By asking nicely wherever possible and by keeping the wiki well-mantained ourselves. If people see that it is overall good and see an error they are more likely to fix it than if the wiki is a mess and they see an error.

OpenWRT wiki is beyond that point on many areas, only basic stuff is still decently mantained (the core services configuration, the parts I did clone over)

[quote]- To what extent do we permit/allow/encourage/discourage people to copy/paste articles?[/quote]As long as they fit with the general style of the rest of the wiki and contain actually up-to-date info.

[quote]- What "guarantees" do we want authors of articles to provide?
- Must they assure us that every word is accurate?
- Should we even expect them to have tried the steps they write about?
- For example, I have not personally verified the Flashing Instructions. But I would do that if we decide that we need that level of assurance.[/quote]The best accuracy checking possible, within reason.

It's better to post an article that looks good than to not post anything because you didn't/cannot test it.

I personally tested the basic configurations and extroot (and also submitted patches to block tool to have it mount f2fs too so I could make a better tutorial), but I don't have the skills/time/contracts to test the more advanced things (firewalls, routes, tunneling).

I just checked that the pages were still being modified from the page history and assumed most content is correct.

[quote]I ask this question because I assume that we (the core team working on the site today) don't want to write all the documentation...[/quote]Don't delude yourself, the heavy lifting will have to be done by wiki maintainers (us). The wiki must look good for people to truly start contributing en-masse.

I did see some people adding one-line fixes around though (I'm subscribed to ALL articles in the wiki so I'm Big Brother, I get notified of ANY edit on ANY page), one of them is the same guy that posted fixes in OpenWRT wiki in recent past, so I'd say we are good for now.

4

Thanks @bobafetthotmail - great answer. Anyone else have other opinions?