Comments on: (Unmoderated) manual notes are bad, mmkay?

By: joyce

joyce — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:59:13 +0000

There’s no problem with unmoderated blogs. It gives others the chance to comment.

By: kwasseem

kwasseem — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:30:56 +0000

Adam,
thanks for the reply ;)
Yes perhaps it’s a remnant of php4

Keep posting,
K. Wasseem
(7php.com)

By: Adam Harvey

Adam Harvey — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:33:37 +0000

@K. Wasseem

I have absolutely no idea. That was the original note, not the one I wrote in its place. My guess is that you’re right, and that it’s a remnant from what the original author heard about how objects were passed in PHP 4.

By: 7php.com

7php.com — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:24:35 +0000

Hi Adam,

Just a remark and a question:

Why is the object passed by reference in function DateTime_getTimestamp(&$dt) ??
PHP5 objects are no more copies. So I think passing the object $dt by reference is redundant or no more makes sense?

Would like to hear your comment on this one.

Thanks,
K. Wasseem

By: Philip Olson

Philip Olson — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:10:11 +0000

Btw, for those curious about how much note editing/deleting has gone on over the years:
- http://doc.php.net/php/notes_stats.php

By: Rijk van Wel

Rijk van Wel — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:04:19 +0000

+1 on the idea of Robert to create a self-moderating system by adding rating options. Since most of the time you only read the comments when you have a problem, you know exactly which comment helped you out the best at the end. Kind of an Experts Exchange “accepted solution” deal. Together with a default sorting by rating, and the possibility to comment on notes (something that is already happening but in a long-winded way of adding new notes), I think we’ll have a real good system that makes great use of the massive userbase PHP has.

I don’t think a wiki or any other external project is the solution btw, the notes and manual should stay in the same place to work IMO.

By: Richard Lynch

Richard Lynch — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:55:44 +0000

Granted, the User-Contributed Notes can be quite spotty sometimes.

But they are often the BEST part of the documentation, imho, as they provide the examples, discussion, and real-world issues that are so often lacking.

They are also absolutely crucial in that nascent period when new functions appear but no PHP Devs bothered to document them yet.

It would not be that much effort for the Devs to prune them a bit more often.

By: Philip Olson

Philip Olson — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:08:59 +0000

In theory, user comments exist to be integrated into the PHP manual sources. So in this case, someone might see it and realize the page itself could use an example and write one. If the user supplied example is good, use it (and credit them accordingly). Of course, theory does not always turn into practice.

The user comments were cutting edge 10 years ago, and directly contributed to the success of PHP. Design a new system? Sounds like a great idea! Please email phpdoc@lists.php.net with thoughts (and check the archives for others).

Adam, I think you should write patches and ask for karma to the PHP manual sources. ;)

By: Steve Clay

Steve Clay — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:31:04 +0000

@James Dempster: agreed. Or allow users with high StackOverflow reps for PHP be able to make manual edits (w/ some sort of approval process).

By: James Dempster

James Dempster — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:59:50 +0000

Think it would have made sense to leave it there and show the much better way of doing it.

See it as a wrong way right way of doing things. People can learn from that.

Would be nice if we had something like Stackoverflow for the php manual.