Daniel I am with you on this. Saying no is not easy, because sometimes offends the person whose contribution is being removed. Most understand that it is a judgement call on their contribution no on their person, but some do not understand that and can even turn to flaming. Only thing to do is to done a padded asbestos suit, and keep prodding :-)
In the end, the product (the best manual for a programming language, bar none) speaks for itself. Cheers (from an old fart who pokes his head to blurt nonsense once in a while). -- Jesus M. Castagnetto <je...@castagnetto.com> Web: http://www.castagnetto.com/ On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 10:34, Daniel Brown <danbr...@php.net> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 16:54, Maciek Sokolewicz > <maciek.sokolew...@gmail.com> wrote: > > A few days ago I deleted a note, and the author sent a mail to the > > php-general list complaining about it. The answer by Dan was basically > that > > the notes maintainers are overzealous and the author should contact the > > person who had deleted the note for clarification. Though I personally > think > > saying that notes maintainers are overzealous is simply incorrect and may > > even be interpreted as insulting (yes, I do feel that way), that's not > the > > point I'm trying to discuss. > > Well, you're certainly welcome to feel insulted at any time, but > before you do, consider the facts: I'm a note maintainer as well, and > I'm also by far the most active. Thus, if anyone is overzealous at > times, it's likely to be me. It wasn't a slight against you (if I > intended it to be, I'd have CC'd you on the email personally to make > the point). I always encourage folks who complain about user note > removal to contact the editor who removed it so that they can best > explain their reason for deleting it. On occasion, I also confer with > editors (particularly the newer ones) to see their reasoning for > removing or rejecting notes. Most often, the reasons are justifiable; > very rarely (though it does sometimes occur), the editor needs a bit > of guidance as to what should or should not be removed. > > The most basic guidelines I see to follow as a user note editor > are the very "dos and don'ts" the note submitter sees when adding a > note to the documentation. If there is an obvious violation or > ignorance of the rules, the note goes. Then, the guidelines (which > are not rules, and should never become rules, because it would detract > from the quality we've had thus far) come into play. From there, it's > essentially a subjective process, left to the individual editor as to > what adds value and what does not. > > Over the years, I've had literally dozens of folks either question > or complain about my decision to remove a note, and I would say > roughly one-quarter of the time, through discussion, I'm convinced by > the submitter that the note does add value. Probably another > one-quarter of the time the discussion ends in the submission of > either a bug report or feature request. The remaining half is a > combination of cases where the user simply did not read the > pre-submission stanzas and either referred to another note or posted > "improvements" on an existing code snippet; posted an overtly biased > opinion on the language, site, or project members; linked to their own > website or blog; or the note just plainly didn't belong in the manual, > and I wasn't properly convinced otherwise by the submitter. > > When dealing with the notes, the biggest thing to remember is that > we're editors; we're not here to please the submitting individuals, > but rather the readers of the manual and attached notes. That's going > to piss people off on both sides of the coin at times, and - quite > frankly - that's just too bad. As long as the documentation continues > to be as quality as it has been, my own opinion is that we're still > doing things just fine. > > -- > </Daniel P. Brown> > Network Infrastructure Manager > http://www.php.net/ >
