Re: <FAQENTRY> 3.2 update needed

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
> VK wrote:
>> Matt Kruse wrote:
>>> Perhaps the FAQ should be a wiki?
>>
>> Also it would be great to have options:
>> "Submit this FAQ translated to ..." so one could volunteer in
>> translation on her mother tongue
>> and
>> "This FAQ also available on..." for existing translations.
>
> I like both suggestions. Note that e.g. de.comp.lang.javascript
> also has a FAQ, so if one would desire a specific FAQ translated
> to German, it would be possible to additionally link to it and
> vice-versa.

Translating the various articles associated with the FAQ into other
languages is a concept that I am completely happy with (at least as far
as the articles that I was responsible for writing are concerned). At
least within certain restrictions. Indeed a couple of months ago I
agreed to a French translation of:-

<URL: http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html >

On the condition that the result be publicly available (so we could link
to it from the original), preserve all of the original credits and that
I could verify the accuracy of the translation (I was going to ask one
of my French colleagues to check the translation). As the result is at:-

<URL:
http://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Le_principe_de_%22fermeture%22_en_J
avaScript >

- you would imagine that satisfying those criteria would not be a
problem. But the translator decided, for some unknown reason, to split
the article up across numerous pages (which is not the way in which I
designed it to be read) and every time I visit that page half the links
into the sections of the article don't work, so half the article is
inaccessible. I cannot ask any of my colleagues to verify the
translation, because they cannot get at all of it, and I cannot justify
linking to it as it is pretty useless in its fractional state.

The ease with which someone can take something an intrinsically reliable
as an article marked up in HTML and render it broken is sometimes
astounding. That it should be contributors to develope.mozilla.org who
are achieving this is particularly disappointing.

As to the FAQ being a wiki; I have said from the outset, and it is
stated in the notes, that anyone wishing to contribute an article to the
FAQ notes is free to do so, so long as they accept that the article be
subject to public technical scrutiny on the group (and accepted as
accurate/useful) and may be subject to unrestricted future editing (in
the event that it becomes inaccurate at some future point).

The total number of articles proposed for inclusion in the FAQ notes in
the last two years is one. And that written by VK; factually incorrect,
confused and misleading, and so not included because it did not (and
could not) pass the scrutiny of the group.

And we are not even restricted to whole articles, there is the
miscellaneous tips and tricks page, where any well explained specific
technique might be presented, but no contributions there either.

So given that nobody seems willing or able to contribute anything
substantial to the FAQ what would you expect to appear in such a wiki?
Fragmentary arguments? We can get plenty of those from the group
archives. And to retain the usefulness of the FAQ it would be necessary
to weed out the wrong, inaccurate and superficial. If asking for
contributions yields nothing then allowing contributions and then
weeding out the worthless is also likely to yield nothing, only in the
latter case it requires a constant effort to achieve that.

Richard.
Received on Mon Nov 21 03:15:37 2005