I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action • Hacker News Board

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#81

Post by 542458 » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

nwsm wrote: post #76

gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

>degenerate activism What's this in reference to, specifically?

Feels like a dogwhistle to me, although I hope it is just an unfortunate choice of words. Describing causes as degenerate has a pretty sordid history, with the “degeneracy” in question usually being human rights.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#82

Post by danbolt » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #31

gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

>degenerate activism What is degenerate activism?

This kind of stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEY9lmCZbIc

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#83

Post by egsec » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

I think a good parallel is OWASP for web app security. The content is free and open for the internet. OWASP doesn't directly focus on curating the content and it is left up to the community. The content grows old and stale, errors do not get corrected, and the writing is often what I would call draft quality even when its published.

There are always a lot more consumers than creators of content on any platform. Most people going to use a resource are not the same who can write about it, not everyone on YouTube has something to share or make a video. And why give it away for free when you can make a paid course, give a talk, charge consulting fees, sell a solution to a problem?

You need to align incentives. Again, why contribute to something and possibly deal with the pain of moderation for free (costs instead of gain). Should we blindly trust the wisdom of the crowds? The other cost of free, is that the community may not be capable or not interested in sufficient moderation - this leads to low quality content which chases people away, even if there is good content right next to it.

OWASP's incentives and objectives have never been 100% clear to me. There are some big security players involved, but it seems more interested in research, community, grants, etc versus content. When you look at MDN, Mozilla has a clear incentive to document these things so developers build more "standard" vs "Chrome-focused" web apps, which helps keep users on FireFox since all of their favorite sites are less likely to break without FireFox simply copying decision made by Chrome. By documenting expected action and quirks, it forces Google et al. to try to move back towards agreed upon standards.

In security, I am generally more reliant upon vendor write ups and content from people with a reputation. Security has a much smaller population than web dev. Also, for web dev a lot of people pick it up and feel comfortable writing publicly even when they are just starting out (See Dev.To). I am not sure if companies pump millions of dollars into commercial web tools beyond graphics and CMS type stuff, so I wonder if a more decentralized collection of guidance is practical for the web, not to mention that there is a lot of nuance between browsers and even recent versions.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#84

Post by marcinzm » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

CarelessExpert wrote: post #35

gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

> Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

The issue is that the mission Mozilla views itself as having and the mission many people want Mozilla to have are not the same. You can't trust someone to use your money wisely when your fundamental goals are clearly not aligned. At that point your only options are to restrict how donations can be used or to not donate at all.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#85

Post by speedgoose » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

billyhoffman wrote: post #77

speedgoose wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks pretty closed source.

Look in the footer. It’s a Creative Commons Attribution license for all web.dev content and Apache 2 for all the code samples. I’m really not sure what else you would ask for here

My bad, the code is also on Github.

However it's far from a wiki and the process looks boring and cumbersome: https://web.dev/handbook/quick-start/

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#86

Post by aazaa » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention W3Schools, because that's another model that has existed in parallel with, and may actually predate MDN.

It has incredible Google juice, seems to be as resilient as an army of cockroaches, and is about as pretty.

Still, it's another path this could take.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#87

Post by dragontamer » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #74

dragontamer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does take a high salaried non-technical CEO to market the idea to more people, which brings in more funding for the project. That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work. A lot of charities become marketing firms to bring in more money. Because that's how you effectively grow a…

> That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work. Sounds like they don't need my donation, the people who do this non-technical work are bringing in revenue by the wheelbarrow load. If they weren't the price they charge for their skills would not be justifiable.

I mean, all I have to do is bring up a highly successful 401(c) like Red Cross, or even significant portions of universities / schools.

Small donations over a large base, which largely go towards marketing (ie: Sportsball and festivals at universities) will make a far larger and more successful charity than a purely technical oriented one. Its just the reality of the modern world.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#88

Post by th0ma5 » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

ytNumbers wrote: post #67

th0ma5 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a kind of far right virtue signalling as far as I can tell. In my opinion, it is wild projection, but it seems to try to label any progressive ideal as regression.

That phrase might refer to any kind of activism that degenerates into mob violence.

Point taken, I had forgotten how the US police unions started rioting and attacking the very people they were meant to protect. I think entitlement can play a role, but I think degenerate as a word is rather heavy handed like calling police pigs or something.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#89

Post by TAForObvReasons » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #65

CarelessExpert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

It is not a matter of expertise, but a matter of setting priorities and valuing projects. I value MDN and Firefox. I am fine with every other aspect of Mozilla dying to save those two. How do I donate my dollar with that goal in mind? As my goals are not really aligned with Mozilla as a whole.

With MDN specifically, it's paying someone to maintain the wiki. If a technical writer was willing to do this as a Patreon I'd throw $5 a month

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#90

Post by jermier » Fri, Aug 14, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

It would be cool if MDN had a Stack Overflow question-and-answer style format alongside the main offering. Then Mozilla could take advantage of the gamification model where users earn badges and awards for their efforts.

Jeff Atwood said it once: `If you put a number next to someone's name, then that person will try everything to increase that number`. Also: it would look good on CVs and would be a good heuristic to determine if a person's really fit for a position.