Although I'm not part of the original discussion, big +100 from me :)
On 11/12/05, Alexander Hars <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Jason,
>
> Thank you for setting up the mavenusers space on confluence. While this
> solution is certainly better for integrating the documentation with
> Maven, it has the disadvantage that it significantly raises the bar for
> anyone who wants to contribute.
>
> For example, unregistered users can't see its content, so they will not
> be drawn to improve on the documentation in the confluence wiki. In
> addition, anyone wishing to make a small contribution, will need to
> register, then send you an email, wait for the confirmation -- which
> will come quickly, I know, but will not be immediate. Most users will
> not bother.
>
> Let me give a few examples of possible user contributions that would not
> make it into a registered-users-only wiki:
> 1. Someone asked in the mailing lists about which archetypes are
> available by default with maven. Brett answered that by providing a
> useful link to ibiblio.
> I thought that this would be useful information for me, followed the
> link and made a mental note to check back the mailing list when I need
> this info sometimes in the future. When we started the discussion on the
> wiki, I just went to the wiki, added three or four lines for the
> archetypes I had found when following the link. Now I know, where to
> find it.
> 2. I was looking through the guide to creating sites. There is a link
> to a description ("A full reference of the APT Format is available").
> The link is dead.
> Of course I looked around a little more and found the full guide to the
> apt format. Of course I didn't bother sending this information to the
> mailing list. It looks like nit-picking but a wiki page would be ideal
> to put this information.
> 3. Yesterday Wendy Smoak noted in the mailing list that the guide for
> creating archetypes states that the <id> tag for the archetype.xml
> should be the same as the <artifactId> but that this is not the case for
> one of the plugins he used so the statement must be incorrect. It is
> very unlikely that an observation like this will be caught if we don't
> let the user who observes it contribute it easily.
>
> I know that you have worked hard at the documentation for Maven. But
> Maven is huge and complex. It is very difficult to put everything that
> users need into writing. And it is probably difficult for any
> experienced maven user - let alone developer - to understand how hard it
> is to learn Maven.
>
> In the past few weeks I have more than once regretted starting with
> Maven. It is a great tool, but whatever I start with, I find that it is
> so difficult to answer the basic questions that arise for the newbie.
> And I know that I am not the only one. It should not be like that
> (please don't take this as a criticism of the developers, I just think
> that there must be better ways to involve all of us in augmenting the
> documentation).
>
> Would you see a big problem if we started a trial with the Wiki? There
> is not much that we can loose. If nobody contributes or it really gets
> defaced all the time, we just stop. We don't loose anything. On the
> other hand, maybe we really get some users involved who submit snippets
> of insights and we reduce the learning curve.
>
> Would you really object if we wanted to launch a trial balloon for
> linking Maven documentation with the wiki?
>
> - Alexander
>
>
>
>
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