[mb-style] Looking for a new style leader

[Robert Kaye]

On Jul 25, 2008, at 12:01 AM, Jim DeLaHunt wrote:
> <snippage>

Everything snipped, I agreed with.

> 1. There's lots of purely editorial flaws, not policy-related, in  
> our docs.
> Clearly stale content labelled as under revision. Poorly structured  
> pages.
> Discussion placed inconsistently within policy pages, or on separate
> Discussion pages. Unclear writing. I think we need a way to identify
> editorial problems, and open them up to low-overhead fixes that  
> don't go
> through the mb-style discussion process. We need editorial  
> guidelines for
> this. Newbie editors (as I was a few months ago) should be able to  
> dive in
> and help with this.

Also agreed. I think this is part of a larger problem -- our overall  
docs are in disarray and could benefit from someone taking an active  
role as Documentation Chief and cleaning house a bit. We've also lost  
some WikiWardens who were directly involved in writing documentation,  
which makes this situation worse. A WikiWarden armed with transclusion  
rights would be in a good position to clean house here.

Would anyone be interested in taking an active role in documentation  
for MusicBrainz?

<thinking_out_loud>

A documentation chief should/could/might:
- Create an list of pieces of documentation that MB should have to  
help its users/developers along.
- Review documentation, delete old documentation and remove  
superfluous documentation.
- Identify who in the community should write/fix documentation that is  
needed.
- Assign bugs to developers to fix documentation that cannot be fixed/ 
written by the community at large.
- Over time, keep an eye on documentation and periodically revise  
documentation as MB changes. (mostly around releases of software)

Like the style leader, I'd hope that this person would not personally  
write most of the documentation, but prod the community/volunteers/ 
developers to write the documentation.

</thinking_out_loud>

> 2. For classical recordings, I think a list of common work and  
> movement
> titles would help hugely. They would let new users copy existing  
> text for
> TrackTitles and ReleaseTitles, without having to understand the whole
> ClassicalStyleGuide. The CSGStandard pages are one approach to such  
> a list.
> Within the last few months there was a proposal to store such a list  
> in the
> database somehow.  In either case, copying is easier than generating  
> anew.

I need to touch base with Lukas and see how his Works branch is coming  
along...

> 6. Our process needs some backwards arrows. There should be clear
> transitions for stuck proposals to go back to an earlier stage.

Do you have a rough draft that outlines how you view the process?

> Interestingly, one thing which I think the Style Czar not need do  
> much of,
> is make style policy decisions. Because, I think, we've got fine  
> people with
> fine ideas, we already have the wisdom to get those decisions right.

Once the process is properly tuned, I think this will be the case.


I agree with everything you've said -- I think you're certainly on the  
right track. I'm ready to declare Jim as the new style leader? Does  
anyone have any objections? If so, speak up now!

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob at eorbit.net     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net