Re: Perldocs and peer reviews

[Ardemus]

My comment here is a good example of people's concerns. I read the comments and I have an opinion. However, I have never written a POD or a module.

A full knowledge of a subject often changes my opinion of it. Take the American Electoral Colledge. Once I read about the history and reasoning behind the system, I reversed my opinions on it's validity. I think that far too many people strongly believe their uneducated opinions.

That said, I support the *idea* of documentation review. I suggest that documentation should make the module's purpose clear. The idea that using the module will clarify the documentation seems backwards. On the other hand, the mechanical details may be best learned hands on, with the docs as a guide.

Perhaps a simple questionaire would be appropriate / helpful. Asking questions like:

1. What is the primary purpose of this module?:
   • Common answer A
   • Common answer B
   • Common answer C
   • Recent answer A
   • Recent answer B
   • Recent answer C
   • Enter your own

2. "What are the core features of this module?"
3. "Is the language of this module easy to follow?"
4. Etc.

This could be aggregated into a format that is easy for authors to review.

In any case, just brainstorming.

[g0n]

Opinion is divided on the question of a structure. XDG earlier in this thread commented that a structure was possibly unnecessary. I lean more towards your view. A structure, however loose, would provide guidance to reviewers and probably make potential reviewers more willing to comment without a) generating poor quality feedback, or b) putting people off reviewing because they don't want to send poor quality feedback.

Here's a few possible questions:

• Does the synopsis clearly explain what the module does?
• Is the syntax of the constructor and any main methods clear from the perldoc
• Is there any functionality not documented (and therefore probably not present) you would like to see in the module
• Is the perldoc correctly formatted (and if not, what is the problem and where)?
• Does the meta data contain a) license, b) language used c) development stage?

As far as brainstorming goes, it might be worth considering opt-in/opt-out of perldoc reviews, setting up a site to post to rather than direct to the author etc. The danger there is that we then potentially start talking about review activity taking place somewhere other than CPAN, which I'm a little dubious about.

c.

Update: Then again, I just looked at recently active threads and found this