7 ms·

It is going to be the 5th iteration of CMS/wiki software. Hopefully this is the right one. 1. Netscape DevEdge 2. MediaWiki 3. Deki Wiki (renamed to MindTouc

by jannes 6y ago

It is going to be the 5th iteration of CMS/wiki software. Hopefully this is the right one. 1. Netscape DevEdge 2. MediaWiki 3. Deki Wiki (renamed to MindTouch, closed source since 2013) 4. Kuma 5. Yari There's a nice history here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN_at_ten/History_of_MDN https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN_at_ten/History_...

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck with that.
- wffurr 6y ago
  Oh no, my internet points!
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    Those are unpaid volunteers. If Mozilla robs them attribution for work (and yes this is work), then what's left? Specially now that they fired every single paid worker.
    - animal_spirits 6y ago
      Mozilla never promised them any pay in the first place
      - icebraining 6y ago
        It did promise to attribute the contributions, since they are licensed under CC BY-SA.
      - aiisjustanif 6y ago
        It’s not about payment it’s about legal open source practices that help foster and protect the community.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      > Those are unpaid volunteers. If Mozilla robs them attribution for work (and yes this is work), then what's left? Warm fuzzy feelings? The knowledge that people read your article thousands of times every day? Honestly, while I agree that it’s a bit sad to lose the attribution, I find it hard to be sympathetic with people who get salty over losing internet points.
      - aiisjustanif 6y ago
        That’s so disingenuous. It’s a knowledge base. It’s well designed documentation. Something that many folks in IT lack at times. Showing people you can properly document knowledge in a collaborative way helps you get hired.
  - pygy_ 6y ago
    The ability to write good tech documentation is a valuable skill. I understand the GP was upset when they lost an easy way to signal they have it to potential employers.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    It's mean to make fun of people for caring about things. If people are proud of work they've done, why shouldn't they be upset when they get no credit?
  - pedroma 6y ago
    I assume they could've put it on their resume and gotten something from that. Now it's just baseless claims.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      If your potential employer is so skeptical of you that they don’t trust you when you tell them you wrote certain articles on MDN, they’re not likely to hire you in the first place.
      - aiisjustanif 6y ago
        If you reference work you do in your own time, I will go look at it. It’s unfair that MDN doesn’t easily make note that their contributions may have been lost to the ether.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Volunteer work like that that results in visible, attributable output can become part of your resume/portfolio. You can point people to it and say, "Here are a set of articles representative of my work." Much like open source contributions (if you're not the primary maintainer of anything open source).
  - wffurr 6y ago
    Oh no, my internet points!
- simonw 6y ago
  It should be possible to migrate to GitHub without losing attribution. I've seen scripts in the past that build up a Git repository from scratch, back-dating contributions and crediting them to the author. No idea if MDN are planning to do that though.
  - lifthrasiir 6y ago
    Impossible unless you have a thorough map from MDN accounts to Github accounts in advance (because once published the repo can't really change much, especially in this case).
    - notriddle 6y ago
      You don't need a map from MDN accounts to GitHub accounts. You just need email addresses.
    - simonw 6y ago
      You can use email addresses, but you can also append a profile page URL to the commit message.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    They never did that in the past. Why start now? Entire articles I wrote from scratch... the attributed author is not me, it’s some bot.
- andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  I don't mean for this to come off rude, but at some point you have to learn that spending time in life on things you don't control can have extremely negative costs. How can you be angry? MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something? It's volunteer work. You're not owed anything. You should consider attribution a privilege.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I don't mean for this to come off rude, but how can you be so cold? How can you lack so much empathy? At some point you have to learn that things matter to people. Volunteer projects rely on an unspoken contract that symbolic recognition, awarded fairly, is a real motivation. And if a project wants to succeed, it needs to take that seriously. Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. But if it wants to survive and keep contributors, then it had better damn well work hard to recognize them. The project isn't owed anything. The project should consider its free, voluntary member contributions a privilege. Understand now?
    - cxr 6y ago
      > Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. Uh, what? Legally, yes. Why are so many people (see sibling below: "Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing") just rolling with the suggestion that this is a grey moral issue and not a legal one? It's more than a moral issue. This is Creative Commons content. Mozilla doesn't acquire ownership of project contributors' work... Once again, we have another Mozilla-related thread where we find two "sides" of an issue, with both offering takes that reveal that neither has any idea what they're talking about. What is it about Mozilla that attracts this sort of thing?
      - crazygringo 6y ago
        I think it's completely clear from context that the references are to the project as a human organization, not its content. Obviously recognition is given by organizers... not by Creative Commons-licensed content, ha! Unless text has become sentient now. :) But I don't know why you're then choosing to baselessly insult people who discuss things about Mozilla...? Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a helpful or constructive attitude here...
- pjmlp 6y ago
  But imagine how much their CV will improve!
- patrec 6y ago
  Since you probably spent hundreds of hours on this, and they are apparently in violation of the license under which you contributed this work, maybe get a lawyer and send them a letter asking for your attribution to be re-instated or removal of all the mis-attributed material? I mean Mozilla earns hundreds of millions a year and pays its CEO several millions a year, they could have well afforded to not violate your rights by spending a few dev days on writing a proper importer scripts.
irrational 6y ago
Wow, DevEdge. Now that takes me back. I hadn't thought about DevEdge in ages.

by jannes 6y ago

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

And the problem is that each time the software changes, attributions are lost. I used to be active contributor to MDN with thousands of contributions. Countless hours of volunteer work. When the platform changed and my attributions were lost, I stopped contributing. I had no street cred anymore. I was angry. The switch to GitHub means the same problem once again. Nice way to alienate your community, MDN. Good luck with that.

wffurr 6y ago
Oh no, my internet points!
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  Those are unpaid volunteers. If Mozilla robs them attribution for work (and yes this is work), then what's left? Specially now that they fired every single paid worker.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Mozilla never promised them any pay in the first place
    - icebraining 6y ago
      It did promise to attribute the contributions, since they are licensed under CC BY-SA.
    - aiisjustanif 6y ago
      It’s not about payment it’s about legal open source practices that help foster and protect the community.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    > Those are unpaid volunteers. If Mozilla robs them attribution for work (and yes this is work), then what's left? Warm fuzzy feelings? The knowledge that people read your article thousands of times every day? Honestly, while I agree that it’s a bit sad to lose the attribution, I find it hard to be sympathetic with people who get salty over losing internet points.
    - aiisjustanif 6y ago
      That’s so disingenuous. It’s a knowledge base. It’s well designed documentation. Something that many folks in IT lack at times. Showing people you can properly document knowledge in a collaborative way helps you get hired.
- pygy_ 6y ago
  The ability to write good tech documentation is a valuable skill. I understand the GP was upset when they lost an easy way to signal they have it to potential employers.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  It's mean to make fun of people for caring about things. If people are proud of work they've done, why shouldn't they be upset when they get no credit?
- pedroma 6y ago
  I assume they could've put it on their resume and gotten something from that. Now it's just baseless claims.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    If your potential employer is so skeptical of you that they don’t trust you when you tell them you wrote certain articles on MDN, they’re not likely to hire you in the first place.
    - aiisjustanif 6y ago
      If you reference work you do in your own time, I will go look at it. It’s unfair that MDN doesn’t easily make note that their contributions may have been lost to the ether.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Volunteer work like that that results in visible, attributable output can become part of your resume/portfolio. You can point people to it and say, "Here are a set of articles representative of my work." Much like open source contributions (if you're not the primary maintainer of anything open source).
- wffurr 6y ago
  Oh no, my internet points!
simonw 6y ago
It should be possible to migrate to GitHub without losing attribution. I've seen scripts in the past that build up a Git repository from scratch, back-dating contributions and crediting them to the author. No idea if MDN are planning to do that though.
- lifthrasiir 6y ago
  Impossible unless you have a thorough map from MDN accounts to Github accounts in advance (because once published the repo can't really change much, especially in this case).
  - notriddle 6y ago
    You don't need a map from MDN accounts to GitHub accounts. You just need email addresses.
  - simonw 6y ago
    You can use email addresses, but you can also append a profile page URL to the commit message.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  They never did that in the past. Why start now? Entire articles I wrote from scratch... the attributed author is not me, it’s some bot.
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
I don't mean for this to come off rude, but at some point you have to learn that spending time in life on things you don't control can have extremely negative costs. How can you be angry? MDN isn't yours. Do they owe you something? It's volunteer work. You're not owed anything. You should consider attribution a privilege.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  I don't mean for this to come off rude, but how can you be so cold? How can you lack so much empathy? At some point you have to learn that things matter to people. Volunteer projects rely on an unspoken contract that symbolic recognition, awarded fairly, is a real motivation. And if a project wants to succeed, it needs to take that seriously. Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. But if it wants to survive and keep contributors, then it had better damn well work hard to recognize them. The project isn't owed anything. The project should consider its free, voluntary member contributions a privilege. Understand now?
  - cxr 6y ago
    > Does the project owe its contributors anything? Legally, no. Uh, what? Legally, yes. Why are so many people (see sibling below: "Perhaps legally, in this case, they're owed nothing") just rolling with the suggestion that this is a grey moral issue and not a legal one? It's more than a moral issue. This is Creative Commons content. Mozilla doesn't acquire ownership of project contributors' work... Once again, we have another Mozilla-related thread where we find two "sides" of an issue, with both offering takes that reveal that neither has any idea what they're talking about. What is it about Mozilla that attracts this sort of thing?
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      I think it's completely clear from context that the references are to the project as a human organization, not its content. Obviously recognition is given by organizers... not by Creative Commons-licensed content, ha! Unless text has become sentient now. :) But I don't know why you're then choosing to baselessly insult people who discuss things about Mozilla...? Call me crazy, but I don't think that's a helpful or constructive attitude here...
pjmlp 6y ago
But imagine how much their CV will improve!
patrec 6y ago
Since you probably spent hundreds of hours on this, and they are apparently in violation of the license under which you contributed this work, maybe get a lawyer and send them a letter asking for your attribution to be re-instated or removal of all the mis-attributed material? I mean Mozilla earns hundreds of millions a year and pays its CEO several millions a year, they could have well afforded to not violate your rights by spending a few dev days on writing a proper importer scripts.

irrational 6y ago

Wow, DevEdge. Now that takes me back. I hadn't thought about DevEdge in ages.