Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
No such thing as a small change
 
PerlMonks  

Re^3: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial (ownership)

by tye (Sage)
on May 10, 2007 at 04:28 UTC ( [id://614541]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial
in thread Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial

Part of the point of Tutorials is that they are further down the spectrum toward "meant to be perfected" and away from "historical writings owned by their author" (similar to Categorized Q+A, but not as far as that, at least not currently). But that is a fuzzy area and one we haven't really dealt with yet. Previously I've noted that if a tutorial's original author is not available to improve it at the point when someone sees improvements to be made, that tutorial could be taken over by a new maintainer or by pedagogues, for example. Precisely the best way to do this isn't obvious to me, however.

In this particular case, the improvements are quite small and don't take much away from the original "authorship" and so we may come to the consensus that such a change is allowed to be made by janitors because this is a tutorial. This particular case also involves a very old tutorial by an author who hasn't visited recently, so it may be appropriate to transfer ownership of the node to pedagogues while adding brief content to the top of the node noting (and thanking) the original author and explaining why ownership was changed.

In this particular case, I think that just having a janitor fix the links is the least distruptive of those choices so I think that is what I prefer. But I'd like to hear whether others feel this is appropriate, especially from those who feel strongly that janitors should not change content. Do y'all agree that tutorials should be treated somewhat differently? I still think that significant changes to content (yes, that is somewhat vague, intentionally) should not be made w/o modification of ownership. And modification of ownership is a tricky step to take and might best be done by always creating a new version of the tutorial that just links to the prior version while updating Tutorials to link to this new version.

- tye        

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^4: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial (ownership)
by bobf (Monsignor) on May 10, 2007 at 05:28 UTC

    I agree with everything you said. Thank you for the articulate reply.

    In the cb, naikonta asked if the link could be fixed. My initial comment was the same as jdporter's (in Re^2: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial): janitors don't change content. Per What do Janitors do?:

    Janitors are specifically directed not to use their power to fix typos
    Instead, I suggested that s?he msg the author and add a reply that contains the proper link.

    After I realized that the node in question was a tutorial, that the author has not logged in for nearly a year, and that the node had already been updated by a janitor (in 2005), I revised my response and concurred with the others in the cb at the time that the node could be considered for editing. My primary reasons for doing that were that

    1. the node was categorized as a tutorial (which, in my mind, are held to a slightly higher standard), and
    2. pedagogues (currently) have neither an established process nor the ability to edit Tutorials (they can only organize them)

    Given that this particular edit would not change the semantic content of the node and would be performed to fix a technical issue, I think a janitorial edit is appropriate.

    From the larger perspective of site policy, I like the idea of creating a copy of a tutorial that is owned by pedagogues if edits to the original node are required and the original author is no longer active and able to make the changes. This would allow the original author to maintain ownership of the unaltered original node and still allow the pedagogues to keep the tutorial current. In addition and for the sake of transparency, I would advocate that the new copy (listed in Tutorials) should contain a link back to the original node.

      I like the idea of creating a copy of a tutorial that is owned by pedagogues if edits to the original node are required

      Interestingly, this is the approach often taken by SiteDocClan in the PerlMonks FAQ, since we generally disdain linking to non-SiteDocClan-editable nodes. For example, faqlet How do I post a question effectively? was written to "supercede" jeffa's (excellent) tutorial How (Not) To Ask A Question.

      I observe that this is also tangentially related to the question of whether Pedagogues should be in the business of writing new tutorials. The concensus answer among Pedagogues has been "no", though of course individuals are free to write tutorials as they will. (Cabal: see Pedagogues Wiki beginning (well, ending, actually) at 2006-01-30.)

      A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight
Re^4: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial (ownership)
by naikonta (Curate) on May 10, 2007 at 10:55 UTC
    I receive some good impression on what you wrote, tye, as well as what bobf did. I just want to make some notes.
    Part of the point of Tutorials is that they are further down the spectrum toward "meant to be perfected" and away from "historical writings owned by their author"
    If I'm not mistaken, this sounds contradicted to me. The "meant to be perfected" part can only be read as "the node must be under constant update", at least by me. I can understand that in order to preserve high quality, tutorial documents should be in as finished a state as possible (from tutorial description page). It encourages future authors to prepare the best, check and recheck external links, test and retest code sample, proof-read and reproof-read the textual, and so on. What I don't understand is that the tutorial documents are somehow considered immutable.

    While we have a node called How does editing work in the Tutorials section?, its content says nothing about "editing" text per se. Because, pedagogues do not have the power to modify tutorial posts in any way. Fortunately, the node further says, for that, all the standard moderation and consideration procedures apply, so we might still have the chance. Especially because the pmdevils haven't really finished building the section yet so currently they can't do much (from pedagogues node).

    To recite what bobf cited from What do Janitors do?:

    Janitors are specifically directed not to use their power to fix typos
    But a broken link is a kind of special typo, if it *is* a typo. Typos are not the only causes of broken links. As jZed commented in the cb, that it could be that the URL itself changed along the way. Another kind of special typo I can think of is mispelling someone's name, especially if s/he is the one the tutorial authors cite from. Yes, yes, that's what checking and rechecking are for. But it happens that a byte or two just find their way to escape :-)
    I'd like to hear whether others feel this is appropriate, especially from those who feel strongly that janitors should not change content
    I tend to urge that the janitors remain with their current responsibilities because changing the content of a node (heck, why should there be a node, well a user actually, named node? *sighs*), not to mention tutorials, is a major issue.
    Do y'all agree that tutorials should be treated somewhat differently? I still think that significant changes to content (yes, that is somewhat vague, intentionally) should not be made w/o modification of ownership
    Well, they *are* treated somewhat differently :-) But yes, I agree. Althought tutorials are *written* by individuals, they are actually *products* of our very own community: PerlMonks. However, I'm not sure about modification of ownership. I know gods and NodeReaper can take over ownerships, but it's a bit awkward for me to apply the same action on tutorials.

    So, my point of satements are:

    • Tutorials *content* are not changing whatsoever
    • Broken links are considered as a special case and needed immediate fix upon discovery. The same thing with people's name (somehow Autrijus/Audrey Tang case comes to mind).
    • Pedagogues should have the power to do the fix above (I see bobf, as one of them, is more than ready to carry the mission :-))
    • If a tutorial is considered to be changing for out of date reason, we need a brand new tutorial on top of it, not changing it (due to ownership matters).

    Open source softwares? Share and enjoy. Make profit from them if you can. Yet, share and enjoy!

Re^4: Page not found issue while accessing a link from perl monk's tutorial (ownership)
by ysth (Canon) on May 10, 2007 at 23:07 UTC
    FWIW, I agree with the above, except for having strong reservations about:
    it may be appropriate to transfer ownership of the node to pedagogues while adding brief content to the top of the node noting (and thanking) the original author and explaining why ownership was changed.
    I'm not able to think of a situation where creating a new node owned by pedagogues wouldn't be better. Though that causes a problem since you can't have two tutorials with the same title, and the existing title may be the ideal one. Does the original get (author) appended? Does it get "downgraded" to a meditation? I don't see a perfect solution.

      Now that this has had time to rattle around in my brain, I think the best choices are 1) to have janitors make minor fixes where appropriate (consideration is probably the best way to submit requests for such). If more extensive "improvements" are warranted, then 2) someone needs to make those improvements and when they finish them, they just need to post the new version like anybody else would (and include a link to the original) and the pedagogues will change the link in Tutorials to point to the new version.

      In the unlikely event of a group of more than 1 person effectively taking on joint, on-going responsibility for extensive changes to some tutorial(s) (seems very unlikely), we can consider a wiki-like tutorial. No need to burn that bridge until we get to it.

      As for what is appropriate for janitors to do to Tutorials, my first stab at a guiding principle is to respect the authorship. That is, objectively technical corrections should be inbounds and nothing else. And if the correction can't be adequately described in the small "consideration" text field, than a reply is probably a better first step.

      - tye        

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://614541]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others chilling in the Monastery: (2)
As of 2024-03-19 10:25 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found