Hey there, I'm sending my reply again because I forgot to carbon copy it to all the other lists.
Peter Matulis wrote: > This is a request for feedback from the community. I thought I'd chime in on this as a fly on the wall. My vantage point isn't as a current participator or as an expert participator, but certainly as someone who has participated in several projects (including Kubuntu and Ubuntu) in the past and is likely to again. If the motivation for the change is an attempt to increase participation, it may not work and isn't likely to be a factor in the reason(s) for low participation. In my experience, tools aren't usually the reason people don't participate. Most of us who want to participate are willing to put up with minor annoyances caused by tools we don't happen to like or aren't familiar with. Participation usually drops off for other reasons which should be investigated independently of the tools used in the project and some of which are beyond the control of (and unrelated to) the project. If the motivation for the change is to bring unity to the project, then that's a solid motivation and one that should be taken seriously. The project would be strengthened by a "united front" among all its parts. It would also make it easier for participants to move from one area to another with little adjustment. All good things. If Markdown is capable of everything that's currently being done with Mallard and/or DocBook and/or [insert markup language here], then a good cheat sheet with conversions from each/any of them to Markdown would go a long way towards easing the learning curve and making the adjustment gentle. I see that you linked to a cheat sheet, but a side by side comparison would be even better. I seem to remember that there are some seriously tricky things being done in some of the docs (with the information presented being dependent on the system viewing it, etc.), so it might be a good idea to ask for examples of some of the trickier code so that it can be attempted in Markdown before making the final decision. Whether Markdown is easier to use or learn than the current tools is a matter of opinion and will vary from person to person. I, personally, prefer txt2tags over Markdown, but that could be because I've used it for several years now and have all kinds of warm fuzzies for its non-invasive markup (which doesn't affect word counts) and pretty well unlimited extensibility. At the same time, I can understand the viewpoint that a markup language that uses words is more obvious to understand for a newcomer than something that uses punctuation. Either way, one of you mentioned that participation is currently at a low, so it seems that now is a good time to make a change since there are fewer people who would be affected by it (pleasantly or otherwise). My two cents. -- Little Girl There is no spoon. -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
