User:Sfws
Taken some interest in weather all my life, just as hobby. Started using Cumulus in 2011 when I had a public web site, and thought the Web Pages Steve and Beth Loft used, together with "Sunny Weather" by Jacques DesRoches, would be fun to experiment with.
Back then I was labelled a "Silly Fool with a Weather Station", hence I registered as SFWS to complete documentation of Steve Loft's Cumulus software (1.7.x to 1.9.4). Previous contributors had left messages where pages needed more work to finish off documentation of what is now the legacy software, so I followed that guidance. The trouble was, this created long and complicated pages, so I knew the old structure was doomed, and I started to split pages to improve the structure.
Other contributors later adapted 3 pages for beta MX. It has to be stressed beta MX offered a subset of 1.9.4 functionality. Most of the existing documentation remained valid, and I continued to focus on what I knew, documenting the legacy software I used.
- MX then diverged so much from the legacy Cumulus, that trying to adapt legacy pages to cover MX too was wrong.
- In early 2020, more people still used the legacy Cumulus than had adopted MX, so the existing documentation remained critical
- I suggested a new Wiki structure was needed, designed for those who had never used the legacy software, but needed to understand how MX worked.
- I will never use much of MX functionality, so I made a plea for people, with MX experience, to contribute the new pages.
In case, the lack of a MX specific structure was putting contributors off, I did work through Wiki creating a new MX specific structure, and identifying places where update needed. After all, this reflected how my input started, taking cues from previous contributors.
I knew I could not keep up with rapid development of MX since Mark became lead developer, but I expected others would chip in.
My plea was ignored, instead I was given admin access. With that, it became quicker to rewrite complete pages, to split off content making smaller pages, to separate out legacy documentation and MX documentation, to update links, and to redesign the Main Page (that previously had a single link specific to MX) so it now had multiple MX links.
My new structure makes it easier for others, without admin rights, to create new pages to document MX, so my work is done.
