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LDP Restructuring and Growing
All in all the LDP endeavors to produce and provide a one-stop source of information relating to the various aspects of Linux. There is now also a search engine on the front page to help you quickly and efficiently locate the documents you need. If you have a question, chances are you will find what you need here.
These documents are produced for you, the end users. That means if there is anything in the documents you find unclear, ambiguous or incorrect you should not hesitate in contacting the author. While the workload of the authors in general may be high and cannot be expected to answer specific problems you may have on your machine, generally authors are only happy to receive feedback on the documents.
Likewise, if you feel you have something to contribute or you wish to try your hands as an LDP author you are welcome to contact the LDP coordinator with your inputs (see the HOWTO-HOWTO). Remember that new documents are produced all the time so it is important to contact the LDP before you start writing in order to eliminate the possibility of duplicate work.
Remember that you do not have to be on-line to read the HOWTOs, in many cases these documents are installed with your Linux distribution and can be found in /usr/doc/HOWTO/
OK, as a long-term Unix user (and later professional admin), I've gotta say that the LDP attempts to solve one of Linux's biggest drawbacks--in a typically Linux way.
Documentation for Linux has been hard to find, spotty, uneven, frequently outdated, and inconsistent. Now, thanks to the LDP, we have easy (or easier) to find, spotty, uneven, frequently outdated, and inconsistent documentation! Joy!
Don't get me wrong here. Things are moving forward. The LDP is definitely a step in the right direction. The authors of the documentation that does exist should be highly commended for doing the work that (almost) no one else wants to do. My hat's off to them!
However, online documentation for Linux is definitely weak, and fundamentally inconsistent. In fact, this is probably the biggest flaw with the Open Source philosophy--different bits (of code or of documentation) are written by different people with different abilities and different ideas about how to do things. (Not to mention a different command of the english language, given how global linux is.) The end result is that two items of documentation are different. Two conceptually similar bits of code end up being different. (Ever noticed that when building a kernel, 'make install' and 'make modules_install' behave in vastly different ways?)
The point of all of this rambling is this: The next step for the LDP (aside from making guides and how-tos take up more than 5% of the opening page) is to move from being a clearinghouse to being an editor. Just like Linus approving kernel mods in official distributions, all documentation should be initially checked for adherence to a standard format (including correctness and grammar, by the way), and then CONTINUALLY CHECKED for ongoing validity! If a doc becomes out of date, then it should be moved into an area (and category) clearly marked, "out of date HOWTOs." In fact, there could be an open call for anyone who wanted to update them. I'm picturing something like, "please contact us if you wish to update any of the following docs." If updated (and gone through the process again), then it would be put back into the 'current' list.
The bottom line is that the open source way of doing things doesn't _inherently_ have to be scattered and inconsistent, but _tends_ to that end without explicit and considerable effort to stop it from happening.
And sure it's a big project, but isn't that one of the biggest advantages of open source?
Sorry for the length. I'll shut up now.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban