Malone email interface

[Brad Bollenbach]

On 18-Jan-06, at 11:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:

> As fair as I can tell there is hardly any useful documentation for the
> Malone email interface.
>
> The best available is
>  https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/MaloneEmailInterfaceUserDoc
> which is inaccurate, incomplete, by and large incoherent, largely
> not a reference manual anyway, and claims itself as `Status:
> Braindump'.

I'll see to getting this updated by Jan 25, a week from today.

> Furthermore it is not discoverable.  It is mentioned nowhere on the LP
> UI AFAICT.  Searching through the LP wiki produces bunches of hits on
> out of date specifications of one kind or another.
>
> Utterly hopeless !

It's mentioned in a portlet on the Malone front page:

<https://launchpad.net/malone>

but your comments demonstrate that this isn't helpful enough. I'll  
have to do some thinking about the hint-dropping UI here.

Would it help if Malone had a perma-portlet that provided help links  
on just about every Malone screen?

> I asked on #ubuntu-devel and was offered (in good faith by people
> trying to be helpful) folklore recipes for driving it.  This is NO
> GOOD.  I don't want folklore recipes.  And we shouldn't have an
> organisational culture of surviving on folklore recipes.
>
> What I want, which I don't think is too much to ask, is
>  * discoverable
>  * complete
>  * accurate
>  * reference
> documentation for all interfaces that are supported.

Definitely not too much to ask.

> When Debian deploys new pieces of infrastructure (be they online
> services, packaging tools, etc.) which all developers are expected to
> use, the deployment is not considered complete by its authors until
> the documentation is finished.
>
> Documentation is an integral part of providing a service intended for
> use by programmers.  It is NOT an optional feature and deploying a
> system without adequate documentation is a serious mistake.

I'd be saying the same thing, in your position.

I'll mail you, and Cc launchpad-users, when the Launchpad email  
documentation is up-to-date, a week from today at most.

Cheers,

--
Brad Bollenbach