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> We might have gone on for another year or two with HTML-format documentation, and it would just have been a drag on our productivity. But we knew that this wa

> We might have gone on for another year or two with HTML-format documentation, and it would just have been a drag on our productivity. But we knew that this wasn't a sustainable foundation in the long term Really? It was HTML for 17 years with over 11,000 pages. But I guess that’s not long-term sustainability? I applaud the conversion, but don’t misrepresent the facts and what you inherited, Wil.

wbamberg 4y ago
Sorry, I didn't intend to misrepresent, but yes, there is a fuller story here of course. Before 2020, MDN was in a Wiki and editors could use a WYSIWYG interface, which was OK for relatively simple edits although for more involved stuff we often had to resort to the raw HTML source (and even for simple edits, the editor would often not generate the markup you might have expected). Being in a Wiki meant there was no pre-publication review process, and it was very hard to make systematic improvements to the content. You couldn't, for instance, create a single pull request updating dozens of files and review them all together. Whether that was sustainable, or whether overall quality just gradually declined - well, it was certainly really hard to maintain. At the end of 2020 MDN content moved into GitHub, I think that's enabled us to make large-scale improvements to the content that wouldn't have been practical before, as well as to have a review process to ratchet up overall quality. But this move also meant the WYSIWYG editor went away, and everyone was faced with editing the raw HTML source, all the time, and I really don't think that was a sustainable situation. We could I suppose have revived something like the WYSIWYG editor, but I think switching to a simpler source format was a better option.
- liamwire 4y ago
  I think this is a fantastic reply, and written with the good grace that the GP didn’t show you. Thanks for the insight, Will.
photoGrant 4y ago
Two L's in his name. You've carefully crafted a slight and it looks worse on you, especially considering your post is about correcting facts.

wbamberg 4y ago

Sorry, I didn't intend to misrepresent, but yes, there is a fuller story here of course. Before 2020, MDN was in a Wiki and editors could use a WYSIWYG interface, which was OK for relatively simple edits although for more involved stuff we often had to resort to the raw HTML source (and even for simple edits, the editor would often not generate the markup you might have expected). Being in a Wiki meant there was no pre-publication review process, and it was very hard to make systematic improvements to the content. You couldn't, for instance, create a single pull request updating dozens of files and review them all together. Whether that was sustainable, or whether overall quality just gradually declined - well, it was certainly really hard to maintain. At the end of 2020 MDN content moved into GitHub, I think that's enabled us to make large-scale improvements to the content that wouldn't have been practical before, as well as to have a review process to ratchet up overall quality. But this move also meant the WYSIWYG editor went away, and everyone was faced with editing the raw HTML source, all the time, and I really don't think that was a sustainable situation. We could I suppose have revived something like the WYSIWYG editor, but I think switching to a simpler source format was a better option.

liamwire 4y ago
I think this is a fantastic reply, and written with the good grace that the GP didn’t show you. Thanks for the insight, Will.

photoGrant 4y ago

Two L's in his name. You've carefully crafted a slight and it looks worse on you, especially considering your post is about correcting facts.