Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 10 Apr 2002 10:12:03 +0200
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        hiten@uk.FreeBSD.org, Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl>, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Feature removal without replacement (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha machdep.c src/sys/conf NOTES) 
Message-ID:  <38318.1018426323@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 10 Apr 2002 00:34:57 PDT." <20020410073457.GF22522@freebsdmall.com> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In message <20020410073457.GF22522@freebsdmall.com>, Murray Stokely writes:

>Point those people to the Handbook, tell them to search for 'devfs',
>etc..  If they can't find the material they are looking for, then ask
>them to submit minor patches to clarify 5.0 functionality, rather than
>write a whole new book.

When as a kid I first learned about "ghost-writers" I became very
very upset.  I felt cheated because what I thought were some famous
person having written his own memoirs were in fact what some random
bloke had written after talking to that person and not 1st hand
evidence so to speak.

Now, having come to an age where I have learned, often the hard
way, that "having an idea", "implementing an idea" and "communicating
an idea" are three entirely different things which require three
entirely different skill-sets, I feel a lot more relaxed about the
concept of "ghost-writers" because I realize that what they do is
really translation.  Anyone who has listened to a tape-recording
of Niels Bohr will know how apt that metaphor _really_ is.

I will readily admit that it is certainly not the fault of the doc
team that so little documentation has come out of my own effort:
whenever I have produced something they have jumped on it like hawks
on a slice of roastbeef.  Right now for instance, I have a patch
to geom(4) sitting in my inbox which as far as I can see changes
every second source line or so.

And that is not an encouraging batting average for someone like me
to sit down and stare at an empty editor...

I guess the bit that I feel missing is:  to me as a developer "the
doc team" is a bit too nebulous an entity to get into a stable and
productive relationship with, it becomes an case by case thing which
never really finds its own rythm and regularity.

My suggestion to the doc-team would be: identify the developers
who you want to get documentation from and try to find a ghostwriter
who would be a good match for that developer.

I think it would work better for at least some of the developers
like me.  And I am more than willing to take my own medicine.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?38318.1018426323>