Moderation on doc.ss.org and api.ss.org Disqus comments?

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Ingo Schommer

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Dec 14, 2010, 10:39:06 PM12/14/10
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Hey guys,

How that we've got the api.ss.org comments going again - how useful are they to you (on both doc.ss.org and api.ss.org)?

1. I'm subscribed to all comments, and find their primarily useful to fix documentation mistakes..
Comments pointing out doc mistakes become "noise" after the fix has been made - do you think its OK to remove them?

2. There's a lot of useless comments, wwo examples from http://doc.silverstripe.org/server-requirements: "what's nginx?", "Very good". 
How do you feel about moderating comments by default, and removing comments without informational value?
I know this is a sensitive issue (censorship etc.), I would be perfectly happy having a dozen comment moderators from the community
on Disqus, though. I think for this to work we need more guidance around whats regarded as a "good comment" - do you guys
know other opensource projects with comment policies?

3. Moderating comments would go hand-in-hand with fixing documentation issues - any volunteers for looking after this aspect as well?
It would most likely involve around 30 mins of work per week, reviewing a stream of comments and making wiki edits.

Ingo

Al Twohill

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Dec 14, 2010, 11:04:56 PM12/14/10
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On 15/12/2010, at 4:39 PM, Ingo Schommer wrote:

1. I'm subscribed to all comments, and find their primarily useful to fix documentation mistakes..
Comments pointing out doc mistakes become "noise" after the fix has been made - do you think its OK to remove them?

As long as this is specified somewhere this is probably a fair call.

2. There's a lot of useless comments, wwo examples from http://doc.silverstripe.org/server-requirements: "what's nginx?", "Very good". 
How do you feel about moderating comments by default, and removing comments without informational value?
I know this is a sensitive issue (censorship etc.), I would be perfectly happy having a dozen comment moderators from the community
on Disqus, though. I think for this to work we need more guidance around whats regarded as a "good comment" - do you guys
know other opensource projects with comment policies?

Maybe have a comment policy page somewhere handy that explains this, and also the removal of fixed issues?


3. Moderating comments would go hand-in-hand with fixing documentation issues - any volunteers for looking after this aspect as well?
It would most likely involve around 30 mins of work per week, reviewing a stream of comments and making wiki edits.


Yeah, I'd put my hand up for that

Al

Brice Burgess

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Dec 15, 2010, 11:17:14 AM12/15/10
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On 12/14/2010 9:39 PM, Ingo Schommer wrote:
> How do you feel about moderating comments by default, and removing
> comments without informational value?
> I know this is a sensitive issue (censorship etc.), I would be
> perfectly happy having a dozen comment moderators from the community
> on Disqus, though.

I would take a page out of the php.net playbook here and go with
moderated comments with a policy. I'm sure many of us developers have
benefited a time or two from comments in the documentation -- they're a
great idea. See:

http://us.php.net/manual/add-note.php?sect=function.function-exists&redirect=http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.function-exists.php

Re: Disqus -> is there any worry with having a 3rd party (disqus) in
total control of the data?

~ Brice

dalesaurus

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Dec 15, 2010, 12:00:53 PM12/15/10
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Ingo, can you elaborate on where the future of Documentation has been
determined to live? Is the current dokuwiki setup going to be the
permanent home or a more integrated solution with other SS knowledge
bases (API, forms, TRAC, etc)?

I agree with aggressively managing (deleting) comments. There are
tons of ways to manage feedback, perhaps a simpler one to keep public
comments internal? What is important to Doc maintainers is to know
what pages need attention and why. The key questions are:

-Was this information useful? [y/n]
-Is this information complete [y/n] + description on 'no'
-Do you see a mistake? [y/n] + description on 'no'

Assuming the continued use of dokuwiki, adding the vote plugin per
page could accomplish half of the above: http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:vote
However the Disqus system would also work well if maintained.

I love good documentation, and my hand is up for helping also.




On Dec 14, 10:04 pm, Al Twohill <moebiusproj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/12/2010, at 4:39 PM, Ingo Schommer wrote:
>
> > 1. I'm subscribed to all comments, and find their primarily useful to fix documentation mistakes..
> > Comments pointing out doc mistakes become "noise" after the fix has been made - do you think its OK to remove them?
>
> As long as this is specified somewhere this is probably a fair call.
>
> > 2. There's a lot of useless comments, wwo examples fromhttp://doc.silverstripe.org/server-requirements:"what's nginx?", "Very good".

Hamish Campbell

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Dec 15, 2010, 2:39:14 PM12/15/10
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Agree with all the above - it's documentation - so unhelpful comments should be aggressively removed. Comments about errors can also be removed once the documentation is fixed. Anything else should be in the Forum, IRC, etc.

Hamish

Brice Burgess

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Dec 15, 2010, 3:04:02 PM12/15/10
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On 12/15/2010 11:00 AM, dalesaurus wrote:
> -Was this information useful? [y/n]
> -Is this information complete [y/n] + description on 'no'
> -Do you see a mistake? [y/n] + description on 'no'

This kind of feedback gathering would be killer. +1 for that! Requests
for specific examples could be helpful too... as well as an easy means
to aggregate usage examples from the other sites (TRAC, SS Forums, IRC
log [wishful thinking], etc.)


Ingo Schommer

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Dec 15, 2010, 3:09:32 PM12/15/10
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On Thursday, December 16, 2010 6:00:53 AM UTC+13, dalesaurus wrote:
Assuming the continued use of dokuwiki, adding the vote plugin per 
page could accomplish half of the above: http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:vote 
However the Disqus system would also work well if maintained. 

Most content on doc.ss.org will be migrated to Markdown and a new custom SilverStripe site to view it (see github.com/chillu).
The remaining doc.ss.org wiki content will most likely be migrated to wiki.ss.org, powered by DokuWiki.
So for large parts of the documentation, a DokuWiki plugin won't be effective - it'd be custom development.
I like the idea though, lets revisit once we have the new system in place?

Ingo Schommer

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Dec 15, 2010, 3:12:50 PM12/15/10
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Great, I'll check back if our guys are fine with moderation as well, and then will draft up a simple policy aligned to the php.net example.
@dalesaurus/mobiusnz: Do you want to DM me your disqus accounts? I'll add you as moderators already (before I forget about it).

Ingo Schommer

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Dec 19, 2010, 4:21:06 PM12/19/10
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OK thanks for the feedback guys! The comments on doc.ss.org and api.ss.org are now moderated, both for anonymous and logged-in users. Current moderators are: Sam, dalesaurus, MobiusNZ,me.

We still need more moderators to ensure the system works, and we can respond quickly to moderation requests.
Any other volunteers?

You get notified of each new comment by email, see http://docs.disqus.com/help/34/.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to get an RSS feed instead.

Now, the bigger task will be to go through all comments and remove the ones
that are not really helping

I've amended the existing "comment policy" (sentence above the comments):
"Please use comments for <strong>tips and corrections</strong> about the described functionality. Use the Silverstripe Forum to ask questions. Comments are moderated, we reserve the right to remove comments that are inappropriate or are no longer relevant."

Does that work for everyone? This change should go live in the next days.

I've noticed that you can "flag" comments (thumbs down icon) in the comment thread.
Do you think this would be a good way for non-moderators to let us know which
posts should be deleted? As moderators, you can of course delete comments that don't
adhere to the policy above.

dospuntocero

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Dec 20, 2010, 10:17:57 AM12/20/10
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i can help you Ingo. im really interested in having a better
documentation for all of us.

On 15 dic, 00:39, Ingo Schommer <i...@silverstripe.com> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> How that we've got the api.ss.org comments going again - how useful are they
> to you (on both doc.ss.org and api.ss.org)?
>
> 1. I'm subscribed to all comments, and find their primarily useful to fix
> documentation mistakes..
> Comments pointing out doc mistakes become "noise" after the fix has been
> made - do you think its OK to remove them?
>
> 2. There's a lot of useless comments, wwo examples fromhttp://doc.silverstripe.org/server-requirements:"what's nginx?", "Very

dalesaurus

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Dec 20, 2010, 1:32:02 PM12/20/10
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The clarification on the Comment Policy is solid. I also like the use
of the flagging for message routing!

Ingo Schommer

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Dec 20, 2010, 3:19:05 PM12/20/10
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Will, Francisco, I've added you as moderators - thanks for helping out!

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Ingo Schommer | Senior Developer

Ingo Schommer

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Feb 23, 2011, 6:11:32 PM2/23/11
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Hey guys, just following up on comment moderation - are you getting notified about new stuff coming in?
I think I'm practically the only one doing any moderation at the moment (and issue resolution in documentation),
and hoped to share this task a bit (based on your previous offers). Do you need any more information to get started?
Don't be shy to moderate and remove comments in the Disqus interface - they don't really provide
a good workflow system in there, but we'll have to work with these constraints, even if it means
that some comments might "wrongly" get approved or deleted. (Unless anybody has better suggestions
on how to collaborate on this?)

Ingo Schommer

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Feb 23, 2011, 10:27:35 PM2/23/11
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By the way, you have to turn on notifications in your profile ("Receive email notifications for comments that are unapproved.")

Al Twohill

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Feb 23, 2011, 10:37:05 PM2/23/11
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On 24/02/2011, at 12:11 PM, Ingo Schommer wrote:

> Hey guys, just following up on comment moderation - are you getting notified about new stuff coming in?
> I think I'm practically the only one doing any moderation at the moment (and issue resolution in documentation),
> and hoped to share this task a bit (based on your previous offers). Do you need any more information to get started?

Ah yeah, how do I log in to correct information in the documentation? :/

> Don't be shy to moderate and remove comments in the Disqus interface - they don't really provide
> a good workflow system in there, but we'll have to work with these constraints, even if it means
> that some comments might "wrongly" get approved or deleted. (Unless anybody has better suggestions
> on how to collaborate on this?)
>

Ingo Schommer

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Feb 23, 2011, 10:44:47 PM2/23/11
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http://doc.silverstripe.org/sapphire/en/misc/contributing#writing-documentation

It doesn't specifically mention the repository and path, 

dospuntocero

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Feb 24, 2011, 5:51:28 AM2/24/11
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sorry about this, i havent noticed that you must check receive
notifications per domain.. i have checked both now. the weird thing is
i've received some emails before...

Ingo Schommer

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Mar 22, 2011, 2:59:24 PM3/22/11
to silverst...@googlegroups.com, Ingo Schommer
Hey Hamish, dalesaurus, dospunctero, Brice, mobiusnz: There's about a dozen unmoderated comments for doc.ss.org on Disqus.
Would either of you have a couple of minutes to go through them, fix the docs where necessary, and approve valid comments? Thanks!

Al Twohill

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Mar 23, 2011, 12:17:33 AM3/23/11
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Hmm, I don't seem to be getting the notifications through RSS
anymore... I'll check directly through disqus

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Ingo Schommer

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Jun 1, 2011, 5:51:55 AM6/1/11
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Unfortunately we're in the same situation again: No comments have been moderated in over a month.
Unless you guys are willing to keep updated with new comments and moderate actively, I don't see how the Disqus comments can work.
We established earlier that moderation is necessary to filter out comments which don't add value (mostly misplaced questions),
so I don't see removing moderation as a viable option. Thoughts?

Ingo

MarijnKampf

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Jun 2, 2011, 3:51:31 AM6/2/11
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I would be happy to help moderate, but not sure how easy it would be
to make any updates to the help as I'm unfamiliar with PHPDoc,
Markdown / github.
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