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Mar 6, 2018 at 8:24 history rollback Adam LearStaffMod
Rollback to Revision 2
Mar 6, 2018 at 7:14 history edited Jithin Raj P R CC BY-SA 3.0
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Sep 16, 2015 at 15:51 comment added zxq9 I also wonder how many minutes from the moment of launch before any docs site is overrun with god-tier editors with nothing better to do than proclaim themselves Protector of the Realm and render it a Wikipedia-level edit-unfriendly environment. That'll be swell. That and the low-quality firehose (in interesting opposition to one another) are already issues that drive confusion, annoyance, and feelings of repulsion in SE sites. I don't see how docs would be any better, especially since they will compete with official docs. This is a pile of hard problems.
Sep 16, 2015 at 15:48 comment added zxq9 The discussion here about the semantics of "comments" cracks me up and is particularly ironic considering the semantic wraparound inherent in meta. Anywhere else on SE, 3+ comments in a discussion flow: Instant banhammer on the discussion under the mantra "Take it to chat, guys"; On meta: [endless, mishmashed, hard-to-parse, semi-contextless chatter -- like this very discussion]; Anywhere else on the internet: [threaded, deliberate extended discussions]. I wonder what will SO's semantic wraparound for "docs" and "examples" and "tutorials" and "comments" be?
Sep 8, 2015 at 20:02 comment added R.M. @NickLarsen My money's on "we don't need comments" being the new site's "we don't need meta". If you don't have comments as comments, you'll need some other mechanism to fulfill the role that comments normally cover, and I'm skeptical that flagging and "fix it yourself" is going to cut it.
Sep 1, 2015 at 13:24 comment added poke While I would also want to be able to close questions as dupes of documentation entries, I do see the issue that documentation pages are not necessarily as static as they would need to be for that purpose. It’s simple for questions: Nobody is going to edit a question completely, so using other questions as dupe targets is fine. But documentation is likely to change a lot more; for example someone decides to split up an existing page into multiple separate topics (because there is so much more to write about it). That is a good thing, but questions having the page as dupe target will break.
Aug 31, 2015 at 23:03 comment added jscs @mirabilos: Compare "Kleenex", "Thermos", "Sellotape"/"Scotch tape", or "Xerox". "Google" has become a "genericized trademark".
Aug 31, 2015 at 20:23 history edited enderland CC BY-SA 3.0
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Aug 31, 2015 at 20:21 comment added Dan Getz A firehouse is another name for a fire station, not a house on fire. Though I feel the same way.
Aug 31, 2015 at 20:12 comment added enderland @DanGetz I did, but I think the concept of a firehouse is a bit more fitting anyways, I'm picturing a hose spitting out houses which are on fire. Sometimes that is what SO feels like if you browse the "Newest" tabs.
Aug 31, 2015 at 20:08 comment added Dan Getz You meant "firehose", right?
Aug 31, 2015 at 20:06 comment added Kendra @XavierCombelle To answer your second question, Workplace is another Stack Exchange site.
Aug 31, 2015 at 19:54 comment added Xavier Combelle 1- I'm not sure that closing question as duplicate of documentation is a good idea. 2- What is Workplace ?
Aug 31, 2015 at 19:49 comment added enderland @mirabilos I'm still waiting for Google to let me down...
Aug 31, 2015 at 19:38 comment added mirabilos People should use alternative search engines more often. Virtually all posts here mention Google as the only one ☹
Aug 31, 2015 at 19:00 comment added Jeroen @enderland I do not believe we should ban short documentations however, as creating a documentation can become a community effort. Someone writes a small example, and someone else adds to it.
Aug 31, 2015 at 17:55 comment added enderland @NickLarsen I mean more the mismatch between how SE uses "Comments" and how the rest of the internet uses them. I'm pointing out that if this is called "documentation" but is really something different, that'll be a naming and branding problem
Aug 31, 2015 at 17:54 comment added Nick Larsen StaffMod Comments are one of the things that sucks about existing documentation, so we're not really going to have them. Instead there will be a flagging system or you can just directly fix the problems you see. Don't think of topics as one to one with examples, a topic has many examples, but not too many or else you really need two topics. If these kinds of design choices seem interesting to you, please join the beta list.
Aug 31, 2015 at 17:50 comment added enderland @NickLarsen it depends greatly on what that topic is... if you are talking about, "how do I use an array?" there may be dozens of scenarios you want examples for. Which might be another related comment, this needs to have a clear scope for each topic and how that will all work. You are going to be using very common words to people, "Documentation" is a widely understood phrase, and if SO's model for that will be different that needs to be clearly figured out. Or you'll get the "comments aren't really comments" problem, too.
Aug 31, 2015 at 17:43 comment added Nick Larsen StaffMod All correct. The thing you left off is "there is only one topic for each thing" so you need to provide sufficient incentive for editing of existing content.
Aug 31, 2015 at 17:40 history answered enderland CC BY-SA 3.0