On Saturday, 2012-03-31, Felix Miata wrote: > On 2012/03/31 11:13 (GMT+0200) Kevin Krammer composed: > > However, KDE, as a lot of other Free Software initiatives, is open for > > contributions from all people, not just developers. So if anyone wants to > > contribute user level documentation for any of those software components > > they are very welcome to do so. > > > > My understanding is that this is a rather straight forward process, > > basically just logging into userbase.kde.org and creating a new page or > > adding to an already existing one. > > That a mere mortal user _can_ contribute documentation doesn't account for > the knowledge of what to write. I assumed that it was obvious that writing about some topic required some knowledge about it as well as some writing skills and a decent mastery of the target language. Of course somebody without the necessary skills or information, a mere mortal user as you put it, can't contribute that way. Doesn't make the contribution process less open. And personally I don't by this characterisation at all. Most people have decent writing skills and more knowledge than they might take credit for. > It's the devs who know what capabilities > and methods for utilizing them are being put in, not ordinary users, no > matter what writing talents they have to offer. Creating something is not the only source of knowledge about that something. Granted Stephen Hawkins or other great physists are probably the primary source of information regarding current phyiscs theories, yet I doubt that any one of them wrote the wikpedia page on string theory. > I doubt many users with > the urge to contribute have the clairvoyance to know what the devs are > thinking or the talent to read sources to figure out what to write. I doubt that as well. Yet magically way more complex things get written about on wikipedia. Maybe that's what those Nobel price winners do in their labs all day. Or maybe I am the only person who doesn't know all about string theory and everyone else could have easily written those wiki entries. A somewhat less plausible theory is that someone with interest in such an advanced topic had read some books or even research papers on that topic and created the wiki pages based on what they've learned. Maybe someone who wrote such a book or paper even bothered to correct mistakes or misunderstandings. But as you already showed, mere mortals don't read books or papers on advanced physics so it must have been those Nobel laureats. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring
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