[wp-hackers] Developer portal

[Nathan Rice]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

>
> >> I think that about sums up my opposition to the central repository of
> >> documentation/tutorials. Brilliantly stated, Otto.
>
> Hmm... I'd use the same argument to argue *for* a central repository.
>
> Having a centralized place where people can post tuts *and* edit
> existing ones as well (think Wiki, not WP Revisions), would encourage
> collaboration.
>

It's already there.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page

Isn't that the point of this discussion, though? That the Codex is generally
inferior to just doing a google search for a tutorial on someone's blog?

For instance, this:
http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2009/wordpress-settings-api-tutorial/
seems far more useful to me than this:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_API


>
> > People don't want to contribute without recognition.
>
> Nonsense. Wikipedia has no attributions. WordPress has no
> attributions. Many people are willing to edit things without
> recognition. Much of my material have been yanked and stuck into the
> codex in one form or another. Doesn't bother me any.
>

If that's the case, then I propose locating those individuals who are ok
with their material "being yanked and stuck into the codex" and have them be
the volunteer producers of Codex content.

Historically, though, these people have either been too few in number, or
too busy to update the Codex themselves. Whereas the financial (or
psychological) benefit of traffic has historically been a good motivator for
creating content on one's own blog, and therefore there is no shortage of
information accessible via a simple google search.

Making that material accessible via the Codex seems like a good step to me.

However, that's obviously not going to happen, so I'll shut up and try to
provide constructive feedback on the options that actually have a chance of
being implemented :-)