MDN Web Docs evolves: Lowdown on the upcoming new platform • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

cxr wrote: post #143

crazygringo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really know what your first two sentences about human organizations and context are supposed to mean. They're mean that you have completely misinterpreted the conversation, and apparently continue to do so. The discussion started about moral responsibility. You're the only one confusing it with legal responsibility. And that's pretty much that.

You're right, it did start that way. And then the matter of legal responsibility was brought up; one person even posed the question, "Does the project owe its contributors anything?", and gave a direct and unequivocal response: "Legally, no." (Side note: that person was you.) And to say that is to say something that is simply not true—as untrue as any statement now about my being confused about whether legal responsi…

I don't know why you're so willfully misreading this.

The project doesn't owe the contributors anything legally in terms of recognition (or payment, etc.) which was the subject being discussed. That's quite obvious from the context.

Nobody ever brought up legal ownership of content at all -- that's 100% your misinterpretation.

It's kind of amazing how you misunderstand comments and then go on to insult others for supposedly misunderstanding comments... and then proceed to then do it all over a second time! Amusingly ironic. Better luck in the future, my friend... ;)

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

#172

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

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…

Should probably normalize to a superset of Github-Flavored Markdown (GFM)... most contributions can be done ON github via the integrated editor btw... .md files would allow for a reasonable preview as well in the editor.

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

#173

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

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.

At the bottom of a long scroll isn't something I'd consider prominent. I'd probably change it to simply "Donate" as a button, and put it with the badges at the top. Red, purple or orange as a contrasting color from the blue and green badges.

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

#174

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

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.

I still think they are/were in a great position to offer what is now office365 and google docs earlier on, with a position to offer both dedicated and cloud software options.

They had electron effectively a decade before electron with XULrunner and let it die on the vine.

There were opportunities for developer mindshare and for services adjacent to those tools they were already building... that they didn't do more for getting Thunderbird more competitive to Outlook to offering a better breed of messenger platform.

No, their management sat on fat cash, with fat paychecks and ill-conceived projects that lead to little in terms of mindshare or income longevity.

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

#175

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

julianlam wrote: post #3

First impressions: PR model via GitHub, good. That new platform schema diagram for Yari, looks complicated.

Agreed... I'm not sure what of value is really left for non-contributing users on the site.

This is a similar tactic that MS has been using towards their documentation as well, so it's not so bad and for those most likely to contribute to technical documentation like this, the overlap with Github is significant enough.

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

#176

Post by cxr » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #171

cxr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it did start that way. And then the matter of legal responsibility was brought up; one person even posed the question, "Does the project owe its contributors anything?", and gave a direct and unequivocal response: "Legally, no." (Side note: that person was you.) And to say that is to say something that is simply not true—as untrue as any statement now about my being confused about whether legal responsi…

I don't know why you're so willfully misreading this. The project doesn't owe the contributors anything legally in terms of recognition (or payment , etc.) which was the subject being discussed. That's quite obvious from the context. Nobody ever brought up legal ownership of content at all -- that's 100% your misinterpretation. It's kind of amazing how you misunderstand comments and then go on to insult others for su…

Sorry, that's not going to work. The comment you responded to outright said these things:

- "MDN isn't yours."

- "Do they owe you something?'

- "You're not owed anything."

... and your response? "Legally, no"—but of course the problem with that response, again, is that legally, yes; they do owe something.

So try rewriting the context and all the rhetorical gerrymandering you want, but it doesn't change that the fact that (a) there was a discussion in terms of legal responsibilities and (b) in that discussion about those responsibilities, your comments were incorrect. Being wrong because of a slip-up is fine—and it wasn't even wholly your slip-up; you were yes-anding someone else's comment. But this scrambling now to double down after it's pointed out and the subsequent projection—particularly in your last paragraph here—is more than a little annoying to encounter.

> The project doesn't owe the contributors anything legally in terms of recognition

... except they do, for the reasons already stated. Maybe there's some attempt at sleight of hand in your choice of the word "recognition" here (i.e., as distinct from "attribution", but even then, it's not clear whether any argument there, if there is one, would even hold up)—but it's not really important. Because "attribution" is the word that was used, attribution is what the BY part of CC-BY-SA stands for, and attribution is what's required by that license—yes, legally.

It's pretty bewildering that you think you have an argument here.

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

#177

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 8:29 AM UTC

ronnier wrote: post #119

jameslk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is higher friction a bad thing though? This is web standards documentation, not Wikipedia; once a document is finished, it'll be a lot more static. I can imagine they've had edit wars (another commenter mentioned it), abuse, etc, whereas with a GH workflow there's a better review process involved.

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

#178

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

zelly wrote: post #162

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…

The success of Medium has proven that lowering the barrier to write content is extremely valuable. If you're asking people to "work for free" then it should be as easy as possible and not feel like an errand. When you're inspired to write something, you just want to write it and not have the computer get in your way, or else you'll understandably give up. Wikipedia also proved this a couple decades ago. Also rolling…

While I acknowledge you have a point, the parameters here are different; on Medium, everyone has their own space, and low-quality work is harmless. On MDN though (and to a degree Wikipedia, although it's a lot broader), you want authoritative, high quality documentation. Quality over quantity.

MDN won't become better if there's more contributors and activity (churn).

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

#179

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

sergeykish wrote: post #169

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…

Can we have both PR and WYSIWYG? Login with github, Edit page, click button to submit PR with your changes.

In theory, yes; Github is working on / has deployed a web-based version of VS Code, and VS Code has a Markdown preview (and I'm sure there may be a WYSIWIG / Markdown editor as well).

It should be doable to create a WYSIWYG editor just for the MDN pages as well, or any static site generator for that matter. Question is whether they want to invest in that; will that actually improve things, given how the MDN pages are all fairly uniform in look, feel & layout.

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

#180

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #41

This model - storing markdown files in a git(hub) repo and editing them on Github is getting more and more popular. It would be great to see Github add a more rich markdown/frontmatter editor to their interface to accomodate this.

Like Codespaces (https://github.com/features/codespaces)?