I think this is preempting a problem that won’t exist for a very long time. How many comments are you expecting? I think it’s a legitimate theoretical concern, but probably not so much of a real-world one.
Take a look at the PHP docs. It’s all code examples, gotchas and tricks related to the element the page is relevant to. And it’s a goldmine of information.
However it’s not really the sort of thing that is “appropriate” for the main body of the docs, which would all ideally conform to a predictable standard, approach exampling in a uniform way, etc. Also the official section of the docs should not be expected to example every single variation of functionality usage, whereas this sort of thing can grown organically over time.
Obviously it requires curating, and there are a lot more people doing that job on the PHP project than are available on the Lucee one. But, at the same time, far fewer people are going to be attempting to contribute, so this will even out.
Considerations:
- support questions being posted. T&Cs displayed when someone first adds a comment indicating these will be ignored should solve that. And, indeed, they’re ignored and deleted. On the other hand it might indicate a shortfall in the docs (ie: why did the question need to be asked?), which can then be picked up by the moderators and raised as a ticket. This helps your docs improve.
- indication that the docs are incorrect/subpar. This is a legit piece of information to gather. Not everyone has the time to fix a situation, but they do have time to point it out. Also, this is often more helpful than a Jira ticket as it means between the time the issue is raised and fixed, people visiting the page will possibly notice the note. Once the problem has been resolved, the comment can be removed.
- junk or inappropriate comments. Again, the T&Cs. You quite simply don’t need to engage with people who are not engaging the site correctly. You do not need to treat this as a baby/bathwater situation.
- moderation burden. Disqus (for example) has a whitelisting/blacklisting feature, and I’m sure other solutions do too. My blog is low-traffic (but it’s only me moderating it), and it’s easy to tell which people I can automatically trust to post what they like, and other people who can just sod off. And there’s middle-ground rules too.
Yup. And - seriously - this should be a very significant consideration if you actively want participation from the hoi polloi of the CFML community, who - on the whole - are a curious over-entitled sensing bunch, who need more facilitation to pitch in than most.
I think @modius & @lmajano observations - where they differ from yours - are also theoretically legit, but being real-world addressed in an unhelpful way.
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Adam