Re: [gentoo-doc] [RFC] Marking unmaintained documents

["Jan Kundrát" <jkt@gentoo.org>]

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Sven Vermeulen wrote:
>>a) Third party article
> 
> 
> We "can" fix those, but you don't see any news site "fix" their news items
> after a year... they are kept online as a reference. You might want to write
> a new article about the same subject but more accurate - having the old
> article at your disposal can be very interesting.

Well, I'm not talking about fixing, but marking *third-party* articles
as such.

> Although I can see why you want the chapters of the older handbooks "marked"
> as out-dated, some people still use the older handbooks, especially if they
> have older release media and want a networkless installation.
> 
> But then again, that's not the point :) Personally, I don't think we need
> anything red on those handbooks - I would refer to the people's common sense
> when they are reading the 2004.3 handbook :)

Okay, you've persuaded me :-).

>>c) Translation in language which is not officially supported
> 
> 
> We don't link that language; the documents are made available if you know
> the URI (which is of course not difficult to grasp). Perhaps we can disable
> viewing it entirely unless some variable is set (?override=1) but I don't
> think we should.

Neither do I. And yes, you (well, actually someone else, probably rane
or flammie) are right, additional warning might scare users so they
won't trust the translation which is very bad for the first stage of the
process.

> Yes, I know you want something to tell the users "Beware, this document
> might contain wrong information" but then again, how would you know the
> document gives wrong directives to the user? An old hardware-related guide
> might still be perfectly valid - just not updated. Or a very recent guide
> can contain erroneous commands while it is still actively maintained.

I haven't said old document is wrong document, of course not. I was
inspired by some bugreports touching articles.

> Imo, as long as there is no AI that can inform us about the malicious
> content of a document, we can't easily mark such documents as "outdated" or
> "erroneous". I have made a small attempt by allowing us to mark a specific
> bug as a showstopper in metadoc - as a result, the document will be unlinked
> from the index page. This can be extended by adding-in a <warn> on top of
> the document, but you'll have to fight Xavier with this as this results in
> another few queries of metadoc and such and makes the XSL again more
> obscure.

Yep, the question is if it is worth the effort. I'm inclining to say
"no", based on the arguments I've received (except for third-party
articles :-) ).

Cheers,
-jkt


-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth

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