On Mon, 2011-11-28 at 17:09 -0500, Peter Lavin wrote:
Hi,
I used to subscribe to the view that stubs are "an easy way for contributors to cherry pick work".
About four years ago as a MySQL employee I was involved in setting up and contributing to the 'MySQL User Guide' at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_User_Guide. I just did a quick review of that wiki and don't see a single element added to the original content. Not terribly encouraging.
Sorry, I didn't mean that to imply that I think stubs alone will bring in contributors. They won't. They're just one way (of many) to provide a TODO list for contributors you're otherwise bringing in. That said, a page like this isn't at all encouraging: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_User_Guide_Part_V_Using_the_MySQL_APIs There's a serious risk of having too much outline and not enough real content. I wouldn't even know where to begin on that page. There's no complete sections to use as a model. There's no notes to contributors about what's expected in each section. (Yes, I intentionally picked the most egregious page. Other pages are better.) So, yeah, stubs take work to make them less off-putting, especially in always-published content. -- Shaun