Re: [PHP-DEV] Negatively Voted Notes

Indeed, as Derick mentioned, the notes were meant to know that something is missing or wrong in the manual, not as a forum for discussion.

/me goes back to his antediluvian cave :-)

> On 2024-07-10 13.42 -05 Derick Rethans <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>  
> On 10 July 2024 18:47:07 BST, fennic log <[email protected]> wrote:
> >On Wed, 10 Jul 2024 at 15:18, Derick Rethans <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> There are currently nearly 20000 notes in the documentation, with many
> >> having a very high negative rating.
> >>
> >> For example, there are:
> >>
> >> 1131 notes older than a year, with a rating less than -10
> >> 2339 notes older than a year, with a rating less than -5
> >> 5761 notes older than a year, with a rating less than -1
> >>
> >> The worst offender is:
> >>
> >> https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.cookies.php#128286 with -159 (not
> >> sure why the website says -153)
> >> https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.attributes.overview.php#126887
> >> with -104
> >>
> >> We discussed this during one of our foundation meetings, and we propose:
> >>
> >> - to delete all notes with a rating less than -5 that are older than a
> >>   year.
> >> - come up with a plan to crowd source going through the other thousands
> >>   of notes to see if they need to be deleted or integrated into the
> >>   actual text. Each documentation page now has a link to the XML source
> >>   (such as
> >> https://github.com/php/doc-en/blob/master/language/attributes.xml)
> >>
> >> Comments?
> >
> >This is something im both For and Against.
> >
> >On the *for* side, alot of these notes are negative rated for a reason, bad
> >code, bad advice, incorrect usage, etc etc
> >
> >But on the *against* said is removing information, no matter how bad the
> >code is or misunderstood, in my eyes no information should be removed. Let
> >users see others' mistakes, so they dont repeat them.
> >This is what the rating system is for. The only stuff that I wouldn't be
> >against is clearly
> >advertising/promotional/spam posts.
> >
> >If we had a thread system for these comments, so others can reply, they can
> >point out mistakes/bad code/incorrect usage and those reading can learn
> >what and what not to do.
> 
> Notes where never meant to be helpful to other developers. They were hints to the editors to include missing information, to add clarification, and sometimes to add new examples *into* the documentation, and then delete the note. This is less needed now as each page has a direct link to "report a bug" or the XML source. 
> 
> The rating systems was another hint to the editors of the manual to see how wrong of helpful a hint for them was. 
> 
> Walls of code with "special functions", or questions, or incorrect comments were always deleted without prejudice. 
> 
> Help threads and discussions belong on the php-general list of somewhere else. 
> 
> cheers 
> Derick

Jesus M. Castagnetto, Ph.D.
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