Re: PostgreSQL HowTo

[Patrick Callahan <pac1@tiac.net>]

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...

Has any of the leadership recently read or re-reviewed the postgresql
how-to?   Who passed on this thing in the first place and what criteria
did they use?   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?   
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?  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?

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) 

-Pat

By the way.  I personally used the "official" postgres documentation
from http://www.postgresql.org/ to get postgres running.  It was
excellent.  I've also read portions of the PostgreSQL HowTo.


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