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> Better community building: At the moment, MDN content edits are published instantly, and then reverted if they are not suitable. This is really bad for commun

> Better community building: At the moment, MDN content edits are published instantly, and then reverted if they are not suitable. This is really bad for community relations. With a PR model, we can review edits and provide feedback, actually having conversations with contributors, building relationships with them, and helping them learn. This is a longstanding debate in wiki/collaboratively written content, but it it interesting to note that Wikipedia and the other WMF projects have been pretty successful with the anyone can edit, revert or fix after. The review first model is used on specific pages, where it is called pending changes protection, although this is not really like a PR in that there is no comment functionality, and the standard for acceptance is lower--I don't remember the exact wording but it is closer to "this is not vandalism/not obviously wrong" rather than "I personally endorse this" much less "this is the community consensus." These edits have no special endorsement once approved and can still be changed by other editors freely. One benefit of the PR model is finality, once an issue/PR is decided no one else is supposed to open another one with virtually the same change. Wikipedia sort of has that via article talk pages, but there is of course no centralized "maintainer" to adjudicate each and every controversy. Also, many editors just don't check or even understand them.

chaorace 6y ago
I think the wiki approach works best for very diverse references, where there is no such thing as a "good enough" maintainer. You can't do Wikipedia like this, because nobody is an expert in all of human knowledge. On the other hand, MDN is probably sufficiently narrow in scope that a team of subject matter experts can competently manage contributions in a timely manner. Of course, by "narrow" I do mean basically every technology currently in use on the web, so... guess we'll see how realistic that is!
- runarberg 6y ago
  In short, what you are saying is: There is a fundamental difference between an encyclopedia and technical documentation which warrants a different approach to contributions.
  - class4behavior 6y ago
    I don't think you need to "really" change your approach when it comes to wikis. The more quality control you need the more often you just let the contributor prove themselves first. Meaning, you don't automatically approve their submissions, but you don't completely prevent them from writing either, at least for as much as your community have the resources to review.
kevingadd 6y ago
I think there's an argument to be made that the impact of temporary errors in an MDN page is more significant than temporary accuracy errors on someone's Wikipedia article. If a developer goes off incorrect information on MDN it can waste days-to-weeks of development effort and potentially lead to defective software in end-users' hands. To be fair, maybe people should view MDN skeptically just like they do Wikipedia. But I think it's valuable for it to be a reliable source and review-first is a good way to maintain that.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  I don’t think I would agree. There are so many many different topics on Wikipedia. I think in all likelihood there is an enormously bigger amount of topics on Wikipedia that could lead to far bigger problems than some days of time wasted for a software developer, if the pages were to contain seriously bad information.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
Being able to have defense/discussion about your documentation edit is something sorely lacking on wiki platforms that you get in pull requests. Frankly, I always felt the wiki model pretty much a show-stopper to making any real edits with no good UI for commit review and a good UI for having a granular discussion about your changes. Instead the UX is to burn a lot of time getting a large change through a bunch of potential reversion cycles while trying to communicate through talk page(s). It's a hoop that selects for die hards.

chaorace 6y ago

I think the wiki approach works best for very diverse references, where there is no such thing as a "good enough" maintainer. You can't do Wikipedia like this, because nobody is an expert in all of human knowledge. On the other hand, MDN is probably sufficiently narrow in scope that a team of subject matter experts can competently manage contributions in a timely manner. Of course, by "narrow" I do mean basically every technology currently in use on the web, so... guess we'll see how realistic that is!

runarberg 6y ago
In short, what you are saying is: There is a fundamental difference between an encyclopedia and technical documentation which warrants a different approach to contributions.
- class4behavior 6y ago
  I don't think you need to "really" change your approach when it comes to wikis. The more quality control you need the more often you just let the contributor prove themselves first. Meaning, you don't automatically approve their submissions, but you don't completely prevent them from writing either, at least for as much as your community have the resources to review.

kevingadd 6y ago

I think there's an argument to be made that the impact of temporary errors in an MDN page is more significant than temporary accuracy errors on someone's Wikipedia article. If a developer goes off incorrect information on MDN it can waste days-to-weeks of development effort and potentially lead to defective software in end-users' hands. To be fair, maybe people should view MDN skeptically just like they do Wikipedia. But I think it's valuable for it to be a reliable source and review-first is a good way to maintain that.

codetrotter 6y ago
I don’t think I would agree. There are so many many different topics on Wikipedia. I think in all likelihood there is an enormously bigger amount of topics on Wikipedia that could lead to far bigger problems than some days of time wasted for a software developer, if the pages were to contain seriously bad information.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

Being able to have defense/discussion about your documentation edit is something sorely lacking on wiki platforms that you get in pull requests. Frankly, I always felt the wiki model pretty much a show-stopper to making any real edits with no good UI for commit review and a good UI for having a granular discussion about your changes. Instead the UX is to burn a lot of time getting a large change through a bunch of potential reversion cycles while trying to communicate through talk page(s). It's a hoop that selects for die hards.