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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

#71

Post by Godel_unicode »

newmnhn wrote: post #28
wwarner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, it depends on how it turns out. But my first impression is that authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements.

MDN has never been "authoritative reference documents". It's a wiki. Anybody can edit and republish pages, change examples, do whatever. I noticed somewhere about a year ago that it was a wiki, and have made minor changes to a couple of pages since then, when something was missing an example or something. I change, I publish, it's done. And if my change was wrong, or opinionated, or bad, it's just like that until som…

I think people put authoritative sources on too much of a pedestal because it's possible for someone to naively or maliciously edit wikis. People who write official docs are also frequently wrong, and the editing and review cycle there is far slower!

Every recent review I've seen of Wikipedia vs arbitrary big-a Authoritative sources has said that both have issues and overall Wikipedia is better.

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

#72

Post by newmnhn »

hyperrail wrote: post #32
newmnhn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MDN has never been "authoritative reference documents". It's a wiki. Anybody can edit and republish pages, change examples, do whatever. I noticed somewhere about a year ago that it was a wiki, and have made minor changes to a couple of pages since then, when something was missing an example or something. I change, I publish, it's done. And if my change was wrong, or opinionated, or bad, it's just like that until som…

Neither Safari, Chrome/Chromium, IE, old Edge, nor new Edge have substantial HTML and CSS developer documentation on their own web sites. Their vendors - excepting Apple and the WebKit contributors - all chose to work with Mozilla instead to put their docs on MDN: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-w... It seems to me that as far as the browser makers are concerned, MDN is as close to authorit…

I suppose I was reacting to this:

"Authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements"

Which suggests previously authoritative docs are becoming less so due to being editable. I'm just pointing out they are and always have been subject to edits from the public. If anything the PR process will likely increase the reliability of the info because there would be a chance to do some vetting of changes.

I totally agree that MDN is as close to authoritative as you can get, but it's one (important) step away.

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

#75

Post by anuila »

justinlilly wrote: post #52
luhn wrote: post #34

I'm a bit confused on the diagram for the new architecture: What's the purpose of the Lambda function? I don't see them explain that anywhere.

For the arrow coming from github to the cdn, I would bet that's a deployment where the existing docs site gets deployed as a lambda. From there, CDN calls that aren't cached go to the lambda which are then served up.

If that’s the case, why not just use GitHub Actions? It’s more integrated and requires no setup.

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

#76

Post by andrewmcwatters »

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…

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.

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

#77

Post by adrianmalacoda »

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...

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.

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

#78

Post by wffurr »

wffurr wrote: post #60
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…

Oh no, my internet points!

Oh no, my internet points!

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

#79

Post by Silhouette »

wwarner wrote: post #23
parhamn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man these kind of views bother me so much. They’re taking one of the most (if not, most) useful documentation sources for cross platform web development that benefits them very little, and moving it to a system of open contribution so it can live past the company’s financial problems. And this is your first take?

Granted, it depends on how it turns out. But my first impression is that authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements.

I hope they don't suffer the same type of problem that caniuse has had since incorporating the MDN data. In that case, source data sets that were each well-regarded and, particularly in caniuse's case, well-curated on their own became overwhelming and harder to use than before once combined. The slightly different styles for each source and the partial duplication often seem to obscure the information I'm really trying to get to in the search results now. If MDN is now going to be community-led, I hope they manage to find some arrangement where there is still decent curation and not a Wikipedia/SO-style free for all followed by heavy-handed mod over-reaction.

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

#80

Post by polymatter »

cambalache wrote: post #65
johnfn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which one is it? Maybe you will win a handful of donations here.

I guess its https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim
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