Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.
By Zach Harkey on
Anonymous handbook pages suck, and I guarantee they are hurting the amount, if not the quality, of contributions to the handbook.
If someone takes the time to carefully craft valuable documentation, and then freely contribute it to the general public (including their competitors), they should be rewarded with a simple 'by' line.
Credit is important because it rewards valuable contributors with recognition and visibility within their profession. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had a helpful forum reply lead to ongoing side collaborations and even paying work. This encourages me to further participate in the forums which in turn builds up the Drupal community.
At the moment I'm working on several very detailed tutorials. They cover methods and techniques that took me an incredible amount of time, effort, and trial and error just to learn, not to mention package into concise step-by-step documentation. But I'll be honest and admit that the thought of publishing it on a public website for free (under creative commons license) without so much as a nod in my direction, makes me feel like a chump. Maybe it's a lack of altruism on my part, but I'd be willing to bet I'm not alone.
Comments
update to revisions display
Well, the default author field is not displayed because it provides misleading information on pages that have multiple authors through multiple revisions. However, the improvements to revisions provide authorial information similar to how Wikipeida displays versioning information. At the moment, it seems like the revisions tab does not display for pages that have not yet been revised because the assumption is that this page is only needed once there is more than one version. Perhaps you might make a feature request.
I think multiple authors is
I think multiple authors is really a non-issue. If we're being realistic, there is always one original author that initiates the page and/or writes the bulk of the information. At the very least there is always one person who actually clicks 'submit'. That person is the author.
As in most online publishing (blogs, etc.), it should be the primary author's responsibility to credit additional sources or contributions. This can be done in the same way it is everywhere else on the internet: either in context, "Joe Smith pointed out that...." or with a simple nod, "- Joe Smith provided help on the MySQL stuff" or we can suggest a certain style like we do for comments.
After the page is initially published, any additional evolution of the page will be in response to feedback in the comments which have their own author/timestamps which mitigates the need for additional credits.
-zach
------------------------
harkey design
: z
I have 22 pages
I have 22 pages that I wrote.
My credit is listed in the handbook with one click you get to Book contributers where I see you are listed as well(thanks for the pages btw).
I have dozens more pages that I have edited and updated that I am not listed on. I have several that I have rewritten entirely that others had posted but were severly dated.
An individual page does not show credit for the 5-10 people who have over time updated and improved them over time. I am more than content to be listed as a contrbutor to a project without the need to stand alone.
So far, every person who has posted an excellent answer/well written post that I contacted has been happy to add a page to the handbook and check the little box in their profile
It will be interesting to watch this thread and see how many people agree with you. The question then is, how to show credit for all the editors whose work goes unnoticed or 'rewarded' with recognition and who will supply the necessary coding time to implement it?
What and how you contribute back to a project to those that come after you and whose free resources and knowledge have helped you, is of course entirely up to you. People volunteer and contribute according to their own reasons and values.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Did you read my reply to
Did you read my reply to cel4145 above? I don't think it this requires any coding at all to implement. Really. I think some simple etiquette should cover it.
-zach
------------------------
harkey design
: z
There are handbook pages
There are handbook pages that are several years old that I have completely rewritten. The original author is either gone or has never went back to their contributed page. Should I remove them as the author then? I think that adding names in the content body will add confusion and additional inconsistency to the handbook, but that's just me.
Also, standing practice is to incorporate comments into handbook page and delete them afterward to reduce and remove confusion.
There are some handbook pages with 15-20 revisions over time. Some are minor typo type stuff, others are complete rewrites.
I started on my post before your reply :)
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
+1
I've written and rewritten tons of pages, too.
And I don't think we want to change our policy for incorporating comments into handbook pages.
I should also add that one
I should also add that one of the conditions of the Creative Commons ShareAlike license is proper attribution.
And while Drupal is ostensibly doing this, the fact remains that it is impossible to tell exactly who wrote what.
Sepeck, I'm not just making an argument for the author, but for the reader as well. Over the years I have developed a diligent habit of knowing who is writing the stuff I am reading. In much the same way that I like to know the name of the band that I am listening to. I find the practice invaluable.
-zach
------------------------
harkey design
: z
if knowing who you are reading is important
Then the solution, as I mentioned above, is to see ithe revisions tab for can be implemented for all handbook pages. This satisfies your concern about attribution of the original author, doesn't it?
I don't know - it isn't
I don't know - it isn't visible to me.
-zach
------------------------
harkey design
: z
revisions tab
Can you see it on the mailing list page? If not, perhaps the new revisions patch hasn't been fully integrated.
Drupal.org hasn't been
Drupal.org hasn't been updated to the latest cvs for a while. The latest cvs isn't ready enough for it.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
No, I don't see it on that
No, I don't see it on that page. You do?
-zach
------------------------
harkey design
: z
okay
My permisions are different. Hopefully, once Drupal is updated, we'll be able to set the revisions tab so that everyone can see them. That will give you author information in any instance where the page has been modified.
Zach, I completely agree
Zach, I completely agree with you. At the very least, at least the original author should be credited and I think cel4145's suggestion of implementing revisions to display for the handbook pages is a very good idea whose time has come.
Sepeck, I followed the 'Book Contributors' link and all I get is a listing, the number of pages they wrote and the link back to their user profile. It doesn't tell me at all *which* pages they contributed.
The absence of author information denies drupal.org users an important part of their experience- the ability to relate to other users (which is available in the forums). For instance, through using the forums for the last one year, I know that Jaza, Dman, Eaton and MorbusIff, among others, have an excellent grasp of 'taxonomy', so I pay more attention when they post on taxonomy. Similarly with 'styro', it is all stuff relating to Apache, chmod, file permissions etc., etc. When I click on the handbook pages, this background is completely missing for me. Time and again, while reading the handbook pages, I have wondered who contributed them and at times, I have felt exasperated that I can't see who wrote them.
Zach, allow me to differ, though, on the part about not crediting multiple authors. Some of them may have made the most valuable contributions in refining or updating the documentation and adopted orphan pages that may have lost the original author. Exactly how to do this is a conundrum that needs to be solved.
I think commenting on the handbook pages is actually very good, and needs to be retained, but with periodical cleaning up and incorporation into the exisiting documentation. More volunteers needed, as Sepeck would say:-)
To get back to Zach's post, yes, anonymous handbook pages do discourage contribution. When modules can be credited (though many others may chip in with patches and feature enhancements), why not handbook pages? May not be the right comparison, but you get the idea...
Yep, the link goes to just
Yep, the link goes to just to who contributors are. The handbook in my opinion is a collaborative effort (and one of these days I will have more pages then Drupal_Dublineer).
I don't get the need to know who wrote the page part, but that's all right. We have some contributors who only work in the handbook and almost never post in the forums so you wouldn't be familier with their work. If the revisions tab is posible, then that may be the solution . When author names were visible on each page we had less contributions to the handbook. :)
As to comments, they have to be incorporated and removed. To many comments are version specific or just don't belong. A substantial portion of the updates I do to handbook content is from comments. I generally stick to specific pages or areas that I am familier with and can/have tested.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
First let me say
First let me say, that these are all valid points that have been raised. In a situation like this, there isn't going to be a perfectly accurate solution that doesn't lose the forest for the trees. But it doesn't have to be an all or none kind of thing. We don't have to accurately match each word with each author in order to make it much better than it is now.
What about just having the following information display just below the Title? For instance:
Submitted by Frank Sinatra on 1969-10-15
Last updated by Sid Vicious on 1979-11-02
This provides several valuable and and eternally true pieces of information:
In cases where you completely rewrite an entire page, you have two options:
a) Deprecate the old page and removed from the book (possibly with a forwarding link) to a new up-to-date page which you should submit yourself. The old author is still credited under the blanket attribution list.
b) Let it go. The fact remains, he submitted the post, and you are the last one to update it, at least for the time being. And even then you'll always have the blanket attribution list (which, as some of you have already mentioned, you are content with anyway ;).
: z
I agree
I'd like to be able to see who wrote what especially because then I know who to go to with follow up questions. :)
It would take some coding, but how about an extra tab on each page that's like the "talk" page on Gallery codex? If you make mods to a page, you could put your name and a short bit about what you did if you feel like it.
The plus side to this is it's optional. If you want credit, add your name. If you don't, you don't have to.
The con, obviously, is it needs to be coded. And I'm not volunteering. ;)
Michelle