cvs commit: www/share/sgml includes.navdevelopers.sgml

[Joel Dahl]

[Discussion moved from the CVS mailinglists to doc@]

On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 17:16 -0800, Murray Stokely wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 03:56:31PM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 February 2006 14:29, Joel Dahl wrote:
> > > joel        2006-02-21 19:29:29 UTC
> > >
> > >   FreeBSD doc repository
> > >
> > >   Modified files:
> > >     share/sgml           includes.navdevelopers.sgml
> > >   Log:
> > >   Ok, it's almost impossible to find the FreeBSD internal pages, so add a
> > > link to the bottom of the navigation table.
> > 
> > I always thought the lack of a link was on purpose to be honest.  Not there's 
> > anything sUp3r secret under internal/.
> 
> Agreed.  It shouldn't be almost impossible but completely impossible.
> /internal pages have never been linked from the external pages on
> purpose.  It is for internal communications just as the developers@
> list is and not for public consumption.  This assumption shouldn't be
> changed without a wider discussion.  Please back this out.
> 
> Is there individual content that is in internal that you think should
> be made more visible?  The release engineering schedules, todo lists,
> and procedures used to live in internal but migrated to the public
> areas when I realized the much broader audience interested in that
> material.  It is likely that other material may also be due for a
> migration into more public areas.

I disagree.

1.  Stating that the internal pages should be "completely impossible" to
find is absurd.  We've been linking to them from our public site for
years and we also have a couple of old newsletters linking directly to
them.

2.  I consider our internal pages a resource for our developers, but
what happens when our developers cannot reach it?  The resource becomes
useless, which is a step backwards for the project.  I've heard several
developers complain about how hard the internal pages are to find, and
I'm not even sure everyone knows about them at all. This is bad, bad,
bad.

3.  If we want something secure which is developers-only, then we should
password protect it (or introduce some other system).  Anyone can read
our CVS logs, so just about anyone with some interest in our website
infrastructure can look at those pages.  Google knows about them too, no
matter how secret you think they are.

4.  ...but hey, our internal pages doesn't contain the secret master
plan for world domination.  This projects needs to open up and show what
a great team of talented people we are.  I consider adding a link to our
internal pages a step in the right direction.

Peace.

-- 
Joel - joel at FreeBSD dot org