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MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

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Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#91

Post by MaulingMonkey »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #76
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck wi…

I don't mean for this to come off rude, but at some point you have to learn that spending time in life on things you don't control can have extremely negative costs. How can you be angry? MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something? It's volunteer work. You're not owed anything. You should consider attribution a privilege.

Attribution is important enough that several software licenses amount to little more than "attribute the original authors and don't sue us." Attribution is important enough that a right of attribution is incorporated into some countries copyright law as "authors rights".

Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing - but it's not unreasonable to consider stripping said attributions to be a dick move, even when legal. Maybe unsuprising, but a dick move nonetheless.

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#92

Post by weaksauce »

johnfn wrote: post #48
eznzt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's stuff like MDN that attracts donations.

Fun fact: I have an open source repo with millions of downloads, tens of thousands of active users, and, for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. How much in donations do you think it took in over its lifetime? Hint: it's less than $200. Donations don't really work.

Thanks for the vim plugin for vscode! It's quite useful and usable. fwiw i don't think you get many donations because it looks like an official microsoft backed vscode plugin so why would people throw money at microsoft. that said, i do think you are correct in that people in general do not donate to open source individually that much.

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#93

Post by pjmlp »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #59
jannes wrote: post #15

It is going to be the 5th iteration of CMS/wiki software. Hopefully this is the right one. 1. Netscape DevEdge 2. MediaWiki 3. Deki Wiki (renamed to MindTouch, closed source since 2013) 4. Kuma 5. Yari There's a nice history here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN_at_ten/History_...

And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck wi…

But imagine how much their CV will improve!

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#94

Post by airstrike »

weego wrote: post #26
airstrike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative is to close shop and let it die entirely, I don't have an issue with it It's not like they were extremely profitable and fired people to squeeze an extra buck Laying off people isn't inherently evil

It's more the clear mismanagement of their finances on ill-considered products outside of their core offering that never go anywhere. Some of them appear to be nothing more than vanity projects that subsequently disappear having got no traction at all.

Managing is inherently risky –– we shouldn't expect managers to make no mistakes while at the same time expecting them to keep workers around in an unprofitable business would only serve to further harm the business

Sure, one can rant all one wants about management's lack of business acumen, but that's completely separate from the issue of the layoffs

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#95

Post by rndgermandude »

fallat wrote: post #7
rndgermandude wrote: post #4

Am I the only one put off by the AWS (S3+Lambda) lock-in they seem to be creating for themselves?

and GitHub...

right, tho the github lock-in is probably gonna be the least worse if they mostly rely on git itself (GH issues and PRs can be migrated to other providers or self-hosted a lot more easily than uncoupling yourself from AWS APIs and services).

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#96

Post by chaorace »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #88

> Better community building: At the moment, MDN content edits are published instantly, and then reverted if they are not suitable. This is really bad for community relations. With a PR model, we can review edits and provide feedback, actually having conversations with contributors, building relationships with them, and helping them learn. This is a longstanding debate in wiki/collaboratively written content, but it i…

I think the wiki approach works best for very diverse references, where there is no such thing as a "good enough" maintainer. You can't do Wikipedia like this, because nobody is an expert in all of human knowledge.

On the other hand, MDN is probably sufficiently narrow in scope that a team of subject matter experts can competently manage contributions in a timely manner. Of course, by "narrow" I do mean basically every technology currently in use on the web, so... guess we'll see how realistic that is!

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#97

Post by toyg »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #76
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck wi…

I don't mean for this to come off rude, but at some point you have to learn that spending time in life on things you don't control can have extremely negative costs. How can you be angry? MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something? It's volunteer work. You're not owed anything. You should consider attribution a privilege.

The opensource ecosystem is built on a very thin veneer of perceived fairness: labor is free in the hope that it will bring you reputation (which you can leverage into actual remuneration). If you remove one side of the equation (no matter how hopeful or hypothetical that might have been in practice), the setup appears entirely exploitative, and people get angry.

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#98

Post by cxr »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #76
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck wi…

I don't mean for this to come off rude, but at some point you have to learn that spending time in life on things you don't control can have extremely negative costs. How can you be angry? MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something? It's volunteer work. You're not owed anything. You should consider attribution a privilege.

> MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something?

Yeah, they do owe something: they owe the attribution which is a condition of the Creative Commons license which is what license the content is available to Mozilla (and everyone else) under.

> You should consider attribution a privilege.

Absolutely not. That's not how copyright works. What a deluded, entitled take.

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#99

Post by sroussey »

johnfn wrote: post #48
eznzt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's stuff like MDN that attracts donations.

Fun fact: I have an open source repo with millions of downloads, tens of thousands of active users, and, for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. How much in donations do you think it took in over its lifetime? Hint: it's less than $200. Donations don't really work.

We didn’t have many for Firebug either, though we appreciated those we got and funneled them to new contributors living outside the States where it made a difference.

Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform

#100

Post by blitblitblit »

adamretter wrote: post #85

So, they say that the system is evolving, but from these parts of the article I would argue that the ease of contributing (which is the important part) is taking a massive hit: > "you will no longer be able to click Edit on a page, make and save a change, and have it show up nearly immediately on the page. You’ll also no longer be able to do your edits in a WYSIWYG editor." > "you won’t have a WYSIWYG to instantly se…

> Now users have to learn GitHub and author raw HTML!

Ignoring the fact Microsoft's Github has recently had DMCA insanity, a proprietary frontend, and recently enforced Webcomponents (effectively removing UXP devs who were forced to self-host Gitea just to continue working)... this seems like Mozilla is trying to outsource as much as possible from their own hosting. They also shutdown Firefox Send.

Perhaps Mozilla is having issues / unable afford their own hosting anymore?

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