I think the problem is a little deeper than that. I've been working with
cassandra for about 7 months now - it was very challenging to find out any
real information about using cassandra, and even harder to get clear
information on operating it. There's a truckload of reading you have to do,
and no one place you can find it.

Searching google largely turns up datastax blog posts and DSE docs, almost
all of it out of date (not to say the docs aren't up to date, but the
search results often result in old docs, and old blog posts).

Deeper searching usually results in a link to JIRA. No offense to anyone
involved, but when your first experience of trying to learn an open source
tool is the realisation that all the information you need is simply spread
across ~7000 jira tickets, it doesn't make the knowledge feel very
accessible.

As an example, finding a java driver with a useful abstraction was
non-trivial - it appeared on the surface that there wasn't really one, that
you had to write everything yourself on top of CQL. Now I (as everyone else
on this list knows) that datastax provide one. At the time I never found a
simple page that just pointed me in the direction, and showed a basic usage
example.

Another example is that there is constant confusion about nonclamenture on
this list, because naming has changed over time. If you don't know you're
reading old information, or what the significant changes are between
0.whatever, 1.whatever and 2.whatever its very hard to know whether you're
even googling for the right thing. Dynamic columns are a great example of
this. I think the fact that it keeps coming up on this list is a strong
indicator that the information is not available in a 'sufficient' way.

Another way of putting it is, when I started trying to learn about
cassandra, pretty much every piece of consumable information I was able to
find was out of date, but it wasn't always obvious that this was the case.

Having said all that, everything I've seen on this list points to prompt,
useful and friendly assistance, even for questions that are frequently
asked. I have no stake either way in what the rules on who can contribute
are, but I can definitely say I would have very much enjoyed a much softer
landing when trying to learn cassandra, from the basics all the way through
to the detail of ops.




On 23 July 2014 21:55, Jason Wee <peich...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree to the people here already sharing their ways to access
> documentation. If you are starter, you should better spend time to search
> for documentation (like using google) or hours to read. Then start ask
> specific question. Coming here kpkb about poor quality of documentation
> just does not cut it.
>
> If you find documentation is outdated, you can email to the people in
> charge and tell them what is wrong and what you think will improve. There
> are some documentation which is left there so that we can read and
> understand history where it came from and some may still use old version of
> cassandra.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Jack Krupansky <j...@basetechnology.com>
> wrote:
>
>>   And the simplest and easiest thing to do is simply email this list
>> when you see something wrong or missing in the DataStax Cassandra doc, or
>> for anything that is not adequately anywhere. I work with the doc people
>> there, so I can make sure they see corrections and improvements. And simply
>> sharing knowledge on this list is always a big step forward.
>>
>> -- Jack Krupansky
>>
>>  *From:* spa...@gmail.com
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 23, 2014 4:25 AM
>> *To:* user@cassandra.apache.org
>> *Subject:* Re: Why is the cassandra documentation such poor quality?
>>
>>  I would like to help out with the documentation of C*. How do I start?
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Robert Stupp <sn...@snazy.de> wrote:
>>
>>>  Just a note:
>>> If you have suggestions how to improve documentation on the datastax
>>> website, write them an email to d...@datastax.com. They appreciate
>>> proposals :)
>>>
>>>  Am 23.07.2014 um 09:10 schrieb Mark Reddy <mark.re...@boxever.com>:
>>>
>>>  Hi Kevin,
>>>
>>> The difference here is that the Apache Cassandra site is maintained by
>>> the community whereas the DataStax site is maintained by paid employees
>>> with a vested interest in producing documentation.
>>>
>>> With DataStax having some comprehensive docs, I guess the desire for
>>> people to maintain the Apache site has dwindled. However, if you are
>>> interested in contributing to it and bringing it back up to standard you
>>> can, thus is the freedom of open source.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Kevin Burton <bur...@spinn3r.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  This document:
>>>>
>>>> https://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Operations
>>>>
>>>> … for example.  Is extremely out dated… does NOT reflect 2.x releases
>>>> certainly.  Mentions commands that are long since removed/deprecated.
>>>>
>>>> Instead of giving bad documentation, maybe remove this and mark it as
>>>> obsolete.
>>>>
>>>> The datastax documentation… is … acceptable I guess.  My main criticism
>>>> there is that a lot of it it is in their blog.
>>>>
>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Founder/CEO Spinn3r.com <http://spinn3r.com/>
>>>> Location: *San Francisco, CA*
>>>> blog: http://burtonator.wordpress.com
>>>> … or check out my Google+ profile
>>>> <https://plus.google.com/102718274791889610666/posts>
>>>>  <http://spinn3r.com/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://spawgi.wordpress.com
>> We can do it and do it better.
>>
>
>

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