On 01/04/18 15:17, Andreas Thulin wrote: > Thought I'd create an OpenBSD wiki somewhere, where anyone (especially > non-developers like myself) could create and edit tutorials for stuff > non-developers like myself would find useful. I find that sometimes > existing tutorials become outdated, and was thinking that a wiki would make > updates easier. > > Before I go and create anything - are there already a place similar to what > I'm describing, where I could get myself involved? (I'm too junior to start > suggesting changes and updates to the docs on OpenBSD.org, and I'm not sure > they should be used for what I want to achieve.)
There have been several similar efforts, but unfortunately in almost all of these cases apparently life has happened to the people involved and maintenance stopped. The main barrier here is not the choice of tools (although I must admit that for a certain project requiring people to get the DSSSL toolchain up in order to be able to hand over validated DocBook SGML may have been setting a high-ish bar) or even how much you know about the subject at hand when you start out. There are examples of good tech books that started out as lab notes while learning a subject, for example. If you think you don't have the seniority to start submitting patches when you see a bug (even a typo in a man page or the faq), you're most likely wrong. Your first efforts will not be perfect of course, but if you put in the effort and are able to learn from constructive criticism, it's likely sooner or later you will be adding real value. That said, as others have pointed out already, articles, tutorials and such can be very useful and making these materials I think should be encouraged. Putting together material to share about a subject you care about is great fun even if it takes som effort, and with a bit of luck what you produce will be useful to others. However, if you want the material to *stay* useful you will need to commit time and effort to *maintain* it so it stays up to date and relevant. There are too many cases out there where some abandoned document is so out of date that it's actively harmful or at least very confusing to a newcomer. In these cases it would have been a lot more useful if the material was simply deleted. -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/ "Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic" delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
