Symmetry autumn of documentation? and

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 23:19:07 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 26 November 2019 at 22:53:49 UTC, Laeeth isharc 
> wrote:
>
>> I think often it's less about financial resources than a 
>> coordination problem.
>
> That's a good point. And as has been said before, once you have 
> some money on the line, it forces you to get things in order. 
> One problem of a volunteer system is that there's no incentive 
> to make it work, even when money is not itself the issue.

Well there's clearly an incentive to take some steps towards 
making things work as a volunteer but it's an emotional one which 
means people will only take steps in a sequence that's in some 
way personally satisfying. The problem right now is I think just 
a coordination problem because the people using D in business 
likely aren't mature firms, or at least mature groups, which 
means they are short of time and attention.

>> Lots of people probably wouldn't mind fixing bugs or improving 
>> documentation to earn some extra money and maybe some people 
>> or companies would be willing to support the ecosystem through 
>> funding but unless somebody takes it upon themselves to 
>> organise a way to make it happen then it won't.
>>
>> It might be as simple as setting up a page where people can 
>> indicate their willingness to fix bugs and send email address 
>> along with the sort of daily rate they would need.  Then it's 
>> much easier to ask for support if someone will oversee that 
>> process.  You could allow people to channel money to bugs they 
>> care about provided they channel some to community bug fixing 
>> needs.
>
> I like that idea. College students would be prime candidates 
> for this but they might avoid it because they wouldn't know 
> what their rate should be. It might have to be stated as $X/day 
> or a negotiated rate if that isn't enough.

Well you could make the rate optional and in such cases it could 
be negotiated.  Costs of living and market wages vary a great 
deal between different places, as does productivity of 
programmers.

> Sometimes it's unclear who's even in charge. Dub, for instance. 
> I wish you could find the email address of the decision maker 
> for a particular issue on the website.

Someone should send pull requests to add to the website after 
getting consent from relevant people.  I will try to help if we 
can but very busy right now.

Maybe next year a community development and documentation project 
could be part of SAoC?

SAoD..  of documentation.

I don't know if there would be any interest.  But we would 
certainly consider hiring people who can write good documentation 
(for internal purposes).