Re: [boost] Boost documentation with ability for users to post comments

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost documentation with ability for users to post comments
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-06-05 18:33:08

On 6/5/15 2:32 PM, Phil Endecott wrote:
> Krzysztof Jusiak wrote:
> The place where I've seen this most often in in the
> PostgreSQL documentation:
>
>    http://www.postgresql.org/docs/

Hmmm - looked at this. I poked around a few links. I saw the "Add a 
comment" invitation but I didn't see any comments themselves. Actually 
their documentation looks quite good - maybe that's why I didn't find 
any comments.

>
> See the "with/without comments" links at the right of
> that page.

I'm pretty sure this is easy to implement as installing the comments is 
just a small bit of javascript which we could modify to taste.
>
> In my experience, I've never seen a single comment that
> was remotely useful.

well, my experience with PHP was just the opposite.  Here is a sample page:

http://php.net/manual/en/functions.user-defined.php

> 1 - If the aim were to make the documentation better by
> allowing community improvements, I would suggest going
> all the way and making the pages editable as a wiki.

well, the maintainer could just as well update the docs - but that isn't 
happening.

> 2 - If the aim were to allow people to ask questions or
> to say "this is great", they should be directed to
> mailing lists or forums.

That certainly isn't the aim - of course one really never knows what's 
going to happen when you give users some new facility.

> 3 - and this is the most likely use - SPAM.

I'm pretty sure the disqus system keeps out most all of this. The PHP 
documentation which inspires me to suggest this doesn't have this 
problem.  I don't know how they implemented it or what effort it takes 
to maintain it.

Robert Ramey