(about the comments I see here) This rethoric method of mentioning just the bad/debatable parts and completely ignore the benefits is toxic. It disregard any compromise, as if we could always achieve the ideal solution
MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
121–130 of 202 posts
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#122So, 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…
All of the devs on my team would rather maintain docs in markdown documents with pull requests versus in wiki form or in google docs. Yes the bar for contribution is slightly higher. But barely.
Did they confirm you have to write raw HTML? Markdown seems vastly more likely to me.
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#123> 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 there's an argument to be made that the impact of temporary errors in an MDN page is more significant than temporary accuracy errors on someone's Wikipedia article. If a developer goes off incorrect information on MDN it can waste days-to-weeks of development effort and potentially lead to defective software in end-users' hands. To be fair, maybe people should view MDN skeptically just like they do Wikipedia.…
I don’t think I would agree. There are so many many different topics on Wikipedia. I think in all likelihood there is an enormously bigger amount of topics on Wikipedia that could lead to far bigger problems than some days of time wasted for a software developer, if the pages were to contain seriously bad information.
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#124So, 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…
Shouldn't people contributing to MDN be fairly comfortable with writing HTML? You could make the case for github and git but those aren't exactly uncommon for developers either.
This is a strange thing to gripe about.
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#125Earlier 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.
I don't mean for this to come off rude, but how can you be so cold? How can you lack so much empathy? At some point you have to learn that things matter to people. Volunteer projects rely on an unspoken contract that symbolic recognition, awarded fairly, is a real motivation. And if a project wants to succeed, it needs to take that seriously. Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. But if it want…
> Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no.
Uh, what? Legally, yes.
Why are so many people (see sibling below: "Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing") just rolling with the suggestion that this is a grey moral issue and not a legal one? It's more than a moral issue. This is Creative Commons content. Mozilla doesn't acquire ownership of project contributors' work...
Once again, we have another Mozilla-related thread where we find two "sides" of an issue, with both offering takes that reveal that neither has any idea what they're talking about. What is it about Mozilla that attracts this sort of thing?
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#126Earlier 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…
It should be possible to migrate to GitHub without losing attribution. I've seen scripts in the past that build up a Git repository from scratch, back-dating contributions and crediting them to the author. No idea if MDN are planning to do that though.
Impossible unless you have a thorough map from MDN accounts to Github accounts in advance (because once published the repo can't really change much, especially in this case).
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#127Reading between the lines, it seems obvious that Mozilla wishes to stop funding localization. Translations aren't even that expensive, especially relative to the cost of producing the docs in the first place. It hurts me to see MDN so starved of resources that they can't pay for even that small piece. MDN has been key to so many people's technical education. High-quality web documentation is an essential resource for…
From TFA:
> Note: In addition, the text of the UI components and header menu will be in English only, going forward. They will not be translated, at least not initially.
But that's the easiest part! I understand the part about translations becoming stale, and how it's hard to manage, but honestly, translating a UI isn't that hard.
I think a good recipe to get better translations is:
- Don't treat it as an aftertought. Co-locate the en-US assets with the translated versions, that way your contributors actually see that there are other languages to support. Each page on the MDN website should be a folder containing a file for each language.
- If a translation is out-of-date, link to these more recent languages, and offer an auto-translated version in the meantime. Importantly, let the user switch between the automatic translation and the manual one. Also, make it obvious how they can contribute.
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean for this to come off rude, but how can you be so cold? How can you lack so much empathy? At some point you have to learn that things matter to people. Volunteer projects rely on an unspoken contract that symbolic recognition, awarded fairly, is a real motivation. And if a project wants to succeed, it needs to take that seriously. Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. But if it want…
> Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. Uh, what? Legally, yes . Why are so many people (see sibling below: "Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing") just rolling with the suggestion that this is a grey moral issue and not a legal one? It's more than a moral issue. This is Creative Commons content. Mozilla doesn't acquire ownership of project contributors' work... Once again, we ha…
I think it's completely clear from context that the references are to the project as a human organization, not its content. Obviously recognition is given by organizers... not by Creative Commons-licensed content, ha! Unless text has become sentient now. :)
But I don't know why you're then choosing to baselessly insult people who discuss things about Mozilla...? Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a helpful or constructive attitude here...
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#129IIRC Microsoft a few years back decided to throw in with MDN as THE source for web API docs: https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-redirect-7700-msdn-pages-m...
> Microsoft is joining Google, the W3C, and Samsung to make Mozilla’s MDN Web Docs as the single place for web API reference.
Now that Microsoft is on Chromium, and THAT is also documented in MDN, and Google and Microsoft both own public cloud providers.. I feel like this move is more a step in the evolution of MDN rather than Mozilla simply sending it out to pasture.
Re: MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. Uh, what? Legally, yes . Why are so many people (see sibling below: "Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing") just rolling with the suggestion that this is a grey moral issue and not a legal one? It's more than a moral issue. This is Creative Commons content. Mozilla doesn't acquire ownership of project contributors' work... Once again, we ha…
I think it's completely clear from context that the references are to the project as a human organization , not its content. Obviously recognition is given by organizers... not by Creative Commons-licensed content, ha! Unless text has become sentient now. :) But I don't know why you're then choosing to baselessly insult people who discuss things about Mozilla...? Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a helpful or c…
> baselessly insult people who discuss things about Mozilla...?
It's neither baseless nor is it an attitude that is not "helpful"—I laid out exactly what the basis for the comment is, which comes almost directly from Frank Hecker's post a couple months ago after the most recent layoffs:
> Incidentally, doing a Twitter search on ”Mozilla” gives a good feel for public perception of Mozilla among technologists, but unfortunately most of the people commenting have no real idea what they’re talking about.
https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-f...
On the other hand posting false or simply misleading information, whether intentional or unintentional, is unhelpful. And if it's unintentional, there are a few different ways to respond when someone points it out. One way is to feel insulted and post an emotional response. Another is something like, "Oops, my mistake. I wasn't really thinking about that when I wrote what I did, but on second thought: good point!"
I don't really know what your first two sentences about human organizations and context are supposed to mean. Mozilla does have a legal obligation to abide by the license terms—in contrast to what you wrote—and that's pretty much that.