RE: PostgreSQL HowTo

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Callahan [mailto:pac1@tiac.net]
> Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 4:55 PM
> To: ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: PostgreSQL HowTo
> 
> I'm not going to comment on the PostgreSQL HowTo itself but here are
> some questions for LDP in light of what's been said recently about it.
> 
> The manifesto  indicates that the organization of the LDP is loose,
> infomal and ad-hoc.  Should it be?  Is it truly an informal 
> organization
> or is it organized and directed at will by a few key 
> individuals?  What
> really goes on behind the scenes...

This list is mostly "behind the scenes".  Take a look at a post titled
"Who's in charge" by Poet/Joshua Drake on Tuesday of this week.

> Has any of the leadership recently read or re-reviewed the postgresql
> how-to?  

Poet took a look, as he knows PostgreSQL, and agreed that it was pretty
useless as a HOWTO.

> Who passed on this thing in the first place and 
> what criteria
> did they use? 

I'm assuming you're talking about putting this thing into the LDP
collection, and publishing it online.  I can't answer those questions,
although we have tried to hash out some procedures, without success, once or
twice.

>  Have you taken time to give a serious look at what the
> controversy is about, what people are objecting to?  What are 
> you doing
> to avoid similar controversy in the future?   Does the 
> PostgreSQL HowTo
> meet the current standards of the LDP?  If it doesn't, why don't you
> just remove it.  It's your site after all, not the author's, or is the
> author one of you?   

Unfortunately, it's hard to remove a document if you don't have any set
standards.  They certainly would make things like this easier though.  

> Isnt the LDP a publisher?  Are you, the leadership as a group, acting
> like a publisher?  What's the formal or informal contract, between the
> "publisher" and the "writer"?  have you defined that well enough? 

Obviously not, as we haven't really defined it at all.  

> Do
> you need to spell things out more?  I'm not talking about procedures
> here, but about the relationship, and the rights and 
> responsibilities of
> the parties in the relationship to each other and to the community at
> large.
> 
> If you haven't already, whoever "owns" the ldp domain should 
> be thinking
> about establishing content criteria for the documents published under
> the ldp name.  If you don't will you end up looking like a bunch of
> amateurs publishing anything and everything under the name
> HOWTO-whatever, or are at will methods of control enough?

Well, the LinuxDoc.org domain name appears to be registered in the name of
the Linux Documentation Project, with an address that I'll presume belongs
to one of our "lead" members, as it's not the address of the University of
North Carolina.  (don't want to say who it is and get in trouble)

> These are all just questions.  Don't read too much into them. 
> I have no
> agenda.  I'm not a "member" of the ldp.  I use ldp materials 
> frequently
> and gratefully.  I appreciate all the hard work the volunteer author's
> and others have done.  (see http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/vlist.html)

Ah, but you're a "member" now, because you've posted here.  :-)  Until it
becomes necessary to produce some more formal organization, that's pretty
much all that's required.  Later,
	Grego


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