Re: More metaproblem

[Stephen Leake]

Karl Fogel <address@hidden> writes:

> My request is simple and specific:
>
> I'm asking the biggest contributors to Emacs (you, among others) to
>
>   - Not oppose a revamp of the contributor documentation along the lines
>     I described;

(refering to moving contributor docs to the web)

I'm not at all convinced that would lower any barriers.

The only problems around contributing I've actually seen mentioned on
this list are lack of documentation for contributors, or lack of
awareness of such documentation.

It turns out there _is_ documentation, in several files in the Emacs
repository.

It needs some cleaning up, which I'm working on (see my recent commits).

More importantly, it needs _advertising_.

Whenever someone on this list says "please follow the standard", they
should _also_ mention ./CONTRIBUTORS, or one of the more detailed files
in admin/notes. That will get people used to refering to those files,
raise awareness of them, and encourage people to keep them up to date.

We also need to mention it on the FSF web page (I hope to find out how
to accomplish that). And on the wiki, if we can find the appropriate
places.


Simply moving the docs to a web page will not help with awareness.

>   - Not oppose using a modern bug tracker -- one that supports email
>     manipulation but *also* supports manipulation via a web browser.
>     (Redmine, for example.)

I have on occasion wished I could manipulate the bug tracker via the
web. But that is not a barrier to contributing for me; the email
interface is simple and well documented.

-- 
-- Stephe