Ethan Furman writes:
On 01/06/2015 02:11 PM, Wes Turner wrote:
A boost in familiar usability could encourage effortless contributions.
Not even breathing is effortless.
True, but that's the wrong fallacy. The energy required is not the point, it's the thinking. Wes's point is that he'd like it to be possible to contribute to Python without being aware of the mechanics of contribution, just as it's possible to breath without being aware of your lungs most of the time. That's reasonable, and wikis actually do work in some contexts. The fallacy in applying wiki-think to Python is that for new and small projects with SEI "Level Zero" processes, *increase in quantity* of documentation is *improvement in quality* of documentation. That's no longer true of Python, and hasn't been for two decades (at least). It isn't even clear that filling an obvious hole with an accurate-as- far-as-it-goes drive-by contribution is a good thing. Not only may the residual inaccuracy mislead the reader, it may also contribute to an impression that the Python docs are lower quality on average than they actually are.