The documentation coming from the wiki has been very high quality (up-to-date, accurate, useful, understandable). Because the wiki documentation is created by the end-users of Cocoon (as well as the Cocoon developers) it is properly focused on the needs of the end-users. It is the ideal way to ensure that the documentation covers not only the predicted use-cases, but also the real-life issues encountered by the users of Cocoon.
Using a wiki is a decentralized approach to documentation that allows the development of some types of documentation that are not easy to produce in a centralized manner: -Evolution of best-practices based on experiences in production environments -Tips, tricks and work-arounds discovered while using the product -Integration with other products That last one, integration, is very important. Cocoon is on the cutting edge. It depends on other projects that are also on the cutting edge. Cocoon recently started using Gump to ensure the code in these projects can work together. The wiki is to integration documentation what Gump is to code integration. I agree wholeheartedly with you, Diana, the wiki should be the centerpiece of Cocoon's documentation strategy. Tim Larson >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/03/03 09:33AM >>> <!-- snip --> Sorry, it still feels top-down and it overlooks our richest, biggest resource -- users who contribute via wiki. The best thing that has happened to docs over the past year is wiki. What you are proposing above, unless it remains easily editable/note-able/accessible by our community via wiki or some other mechanism, is going to grow stale down the road. Just because it may be better than what we have now, it will remain incomplete (I still see no dedicated team of authors among us to fill in the current gaps), and after a while it will grow out of date again -- if users can't easily update it. <!-- snip --> Given our resources, given our users, I fail to see why we should perpetuate the closed-cvs-xdoc-editing system like the above. It doesn't produce timely content. We've had it for a long time. Simply rearranging content -- weeding out bad, even bringing in new stuff from wiki, adding tabs, changing navigation -- is like rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic. Please note that I'm NOT talking about Forrest, just about a cvs-based editing system. Cocoon is a vibrant, dynamic, innovative software project. I just don't think a cvs-based doc system, maintained primarily by committers and a few committed users, will ever be able to keep up with Cocoon's evolution, articulate useful information about the rich variety of problems Cocoon can solve, without the help of our wide user base. Diana
