Proposal: migrate content to ethereum.org

[samajammin]

Hey folks - first off, thanks for your past efforts to create & maintain this repo!

Since the recent launch of our ethereum.org developer docs (more on that here), we've received requests to migrate/consolidate content from ethdocs.org.

I'd like to gather input (particularly from top contributors @bobsummerwill @Souptacular @hughlang @gmkung @jamesray1 @zelig @pipermerriam) because I know you've all worked hard to get this resource up & running. This documentation continues to be a valuable resource for the community.

Migration proposal

In terms of incorporating this content into ethereum.org, no action on this repo is needed, given that all content is CC BY-SA 4.0. Our team (& hopefully the community) will be making an effort in the coming weeks to port over content that is still relevant & valuable over to ethereum.org. We'd love any collaboration on this - please let me know if you're interested 😄

What I'd like to discuss is sunsetting this resource. There's a few potential ways to do this (ordered by my preference):

A) Implement targeted redirects on this domain to corresponding pages on ethereum.org

• e.g. placing a 301 redirect on https://ethdocs.org/en/latest/ethereum-clients/index.html --> https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/

B) Add some form of notification (e.g. a banner alert) to each page of this site notifying the user that this information is out of date, with a link to the corresponding ethereum.org page.

C) Place a blanket redirect from any ethdocs.org URL to ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/

I'm personally happy to push forward any of these options but do need help. For A) or C) I'd need access to the DNS (or assistance from the person who controls it). For B) I would need some assurance that a PR would be acted on (my last PR from over a year ago is still open 😅 ).

Why do this?

The community has pointed out multiple issues with ethdocs.org:

• For someone new to Ethereum, it's hard to understand where to get documentation (Rename this repository to ethdocs.org-site or deprecate it as old "homestead-guide" #439). I'd argue ethdocs.org as it currently stands adds to this confusion. The docs are outdated (no commits since mid 2018) & the only place it acknowledges this in the the github repo README. Anyone landing on a page of the website is unaware that this documentation is a historic artifact, unless they see the "Homestead" reference & understand what that means. This creates a potential terrible UX for people new to Ethereum.
• Broken links ("Coding Standards" link on "Contributing" page of documentation is broken (404 error) #438 Ethereum timeline link is broken #461 Broken link for "install_deps.sh" on "Build for Linux" page #464), most since 2018
• Most open issues receive no comments/acknowledgement, again resulting in a poor UX for community members trying to contribute

ethereum.org has several advantages:

• Multiple full-time team members (& an active community of contributors) with the capacity to maintain & improve it
• Ability to translate content (via our translation program)

Given that we plan to move most of this content over to ethereum.org, I think it makes sense to sunset ethdocs.org to prevent potential confusion or misinformation. I think this homestead-guide still serves value as a historical reference but I think the github repo is adequate for that purpose.

Again, any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated! e.g. my internal bias & the feedback we've received is that people care about finding the most up-to-date information on Ethereum but is there particular value of a Homestead reference that I'm missing?

Thanks in advance!

[samajammin]

Tagging @pirapira as well - looks like you merged a good amount of PRs 😄

[bobsummerwill]

Please do :-)
I am kind of amazed that it hasn't already been sunset.
I personally wouldn't bother with any kind of "fancy" redirection. I doubt anybody has got bookmarks into this content.

[samajammin]

Thanks for the input @bobsummerwill!

I personally wouldn't bother with any kind of "fancy" redirection. I doubt anybody has got bookmarks into this content.

I actually think redirects are important here. The site has a surprising number of backlinks pointing to it, ~50K links from ~2K domains according to this SEO tool. It's unclear how much referral traffic they generate (I don't have access to analytics on the site) but I suspect it's worth us avoiding breaking those.

[bobsummerwill]

That is surprising.
Well, whatever you think is best on the redirections.

[Souptacular]

At first I was more into the idea of banners so we preserve the historical aspect of the docs and what Ethereum used to be, but since we have a GitHub repo for that (and since there are a lot of backporting links) I think it is best to do the redirect plan. I'll coordinate with you on this @samajammin. Thanks!

[q9f]

What's the latest on that?

I think we should not keep outdated docs unmaintained. Redirections should be a viable solution unless someone wants to curate this repository.

[samajammin]

Hey @q9f - this work frankly hasn't been a priority for our team but we (hopefully) have found a contributor who can own this initiative. We are in discussions with them now & hopefully will have a clear plan within the next week or two.