Re: Feedback

[Phil Kerr <phil@meteor.com>]

David,

As an author who, like most people, has to balance LDP project time with other
demands suggestion 2 is of great interest.  This could encourage authors to keep
in contact so they can see their 'hits', and ensure that a correct email address
is obtained.

I'd like to suggest an extension of idea 2.  On the homepage of the MP3-HOWTO I
monitor which sections attract the most hits and use this information to
concentrate my efforts.  If the same can be done for the HTML versions under the
LDP, I'm sure this information would be useful to others.

Regards

Phil Kerr



David Merrill wrote:

> From: "Greg Ferguson" <gferg@hoop.timonium.sgi.com>
> > On Nov 22,  9:06am, David Merrill wrote:
> > > IMHO the long term solution here is the ability to extract them
> directly
> > > from the HOWTOs' SGML source. I'm trying to learn perl to do this
> stuff
> > > right now, but am struggling. I'll get there, but I hope you don't all
> > > lose patience with me. :)
> > >
> > > I'd be happy to see a real perl programmer do some of this to get it
> > done
> > > more quickly, but I also need to learn it sometime anyway.
> >
> > I already have that. It's all in the HOWTO data file, if you
> > want it. It's not just getting the addresses, it's making sure they
> > are *accurate*.
>
> Ahhh. Yes, that is the problem, isn't it. :)
>
> The only way I know to verify email addresses is to send mail and see if
> it gets bounced. We could send out some kind of automated mail (monthly?)
> to all of our authors. There are several ways we could do this.
>
> 1. Set up an authors@linuxdoc.org list. This could be either an announce
> list, which only we could post to, like the announce list, or it could be
> a full mailing list for authors to use. Either way, we get the benefit of
> knowing when addresses go bad. The sooner we know this, the more likely we
> are to be able to locate the author and get a new address.
>
> 2. Send a more personalized message to each author on a monthly basis. It
> could be simple, or it could get pretty fancy. What about a "status"
> report on their HOWTO, listing the number of accesses it has received for
> example. That might be interesting for authors to see. For example:
>
> Dear LDP Author,
>
> =insert whatever standard announcements we might want to make=
>
> =followed by a customized status message based on the Author's HOWTOs:=
>
> You currently have 3 HOWTOs published on the Linux Documentation Project:
>
> The Linux Distribution HOWTO
> Version: 6.9
> Last updated: June 8, 2000
> Unique readers this month: 15,000
>
> The Linux Installation HOWTO
> Version: 5.0
> Last Updated: August 8, 2000
> Unique readers this month: 25,000
>
> XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO
> Version: 5.0
> Last Updated: August 22, 2000
> Unique readers this month: 8,000
>
> The statistics should be available from Apache logs.
>
> This might have the added benefit of inducing authors to maintain their
> HOWTOs, in the cases where a little prodding is needed.
>
> Okay, okay, maybe this is overkill. I admit to a tendency to overdesign.
> :) But it's at least food for thought.
>
> --
> David C. Merrill, Ph.D.
> Linux Documentation Project
> Collection Editor & Coordinator
> www.LinuxDoc.org
>
> --
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