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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

#111

Post by tomcam »

blitblitblit wrote: post #100
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…

Not trying to be inflammatory here. What does it matter if Microsoft has a proprietary front end for Github when all the docs are in markdown?

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

#112

Post by jameslk »

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…

> They had a user-friendly system previously... Now users have to learn GitHub and author raw HTML! - I would point out that not all documentation writers are developers!

So you'll need to know HTML and how to create a Pull Request on GitHub to be able contribute to documentation about web development... I feel like if you're writing about web development topics, that doesn't seem like a high bar to pass.

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

#113

Post by blitblitblit »

tomcam wrote: post #111
blitblitblit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not trying to be inflammatory here. What does it matter if Microsoft has a proprietary front end for Github when all the docs are in markdown?

One example would be it is not possible to even make a PR request on Github as half the GUI no longer works in non-WebComponents browers. If it were open source we could perhaps see what WebComponent feature they think is missing and implement it in the browser engine, as it is they do not have any desire to collaborate and the black box makes it all the more difficult to debug.

Github's response: "... further degradation is a likelihood. I appreciate that this is disappointing and frustrating for you..." - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?p=202146#p202146

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

#114

Post by runarberg »

chaorace wrote: post #96
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 eve…

In short, what you are saying is: There is a fundamental difference between an encyclopedia and technical documentation which warrants a different approach to contributions.

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

#115

Post by icebraining »

animal_spirits wrote: post #90
nextaccountic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are unpaid volunteers. If Mozilla robs them attribution for work (and yes this is work), then what's left? Specially now that they fired every single paid worker.

Mozilla never promised them any pay in the first place

It did promise to attribute the contributions, since they are licensed under CC BY-SA.

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

#116

Post by icebraining »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #91
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In fact, it's part of the license they tell you that the contributions are made under (CC BY-SA), hence it's not even legal.

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

#117

Post by icebraining »

gambler wrote: post #38

>We are replacing the current MDN Wiki platform with a JAMStack approach, which publishes the content managed in a GitHub repo. So... Ceding control over content to GitHub. Ceding control over uptime to Amazon. (Both done by a company that paints itself as pro-people, pro-privacy, etc.) >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…

The current Wiki is already hosted on AWS.

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

#118

Post by stu2b50 »

adrianmalacoda wrote: post #77
fallat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and GitHub...

Are they locked into github (using their proprietary APIs) or just using it as a git backend (using standard git tooling)? It's not clear from the article.

I'm pretty confident they're going to handle PRs via the github interface. I don't think they'd get many contributions if you had to email patches in.

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

#119

Post by ronnier »

jameslk wrote: post #112
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…

> They had a user-friendly system previously... Now users have to learn GitHub and author raw HTML! - I would point out that not all documentation writers are developers! So you'll need to know HTML and how to create a Pull Request on GitHub to be able contribute to documentation about web development... I feel like if you're writing about web development topics, that doesn't seem like a high bar to pass.

The friction is higher. Now you have to deal with github and accounts and permissions and so on. Before it was a simple web form.

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

#120

Post by class4behavior »

runarberg wrote: post #114
chaorace wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

In short, what you are saying is: There is a fundamental difference between an encyclopedia and technical documentation which warrants a different approach to contributions.

I don't think you need to "really" change your approach when it comes to wikis.

The more quality control you need the more often you just let the contributor prove themselves first. Meaning, you don't automatically approve their submissions, but you don't completely prevent them from writing either, at least for as much as your community have the resources to review.

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