mmh one thing that came across my mind:
If there's a problem with some functionality with a class, people look at the author-tag, so they know whom to ask. (cause the one who's written it, probably also understands it best)
So if croft has fully understood what the class does, then it might be wise to put his name there, too, so there's one more person others can ask if there are problems. He will also have spend much effort in understanding the class completely, so it's not something that's given for free.
If he only understands parts of the class, I think it's best to simply add his author tag to the methods he wrote or changed (if he want's to have his author tag there) - So people don't start mailing Yuri (or whoever wrote that class) and ask him stuff he doesn't know about.
Arne
Fair point - I guess that's sort of what I am getting at with my test, but rather than just "understanding" I suggest actual major changes - more of a responsibility for the class and inline with what I interpret "author" to mean. The first point of call for support will always be the forums, though the attribution could be used to flag specific people.
Yes, but potentials contributors may be pleased to see their names in a javadoc, even if they've just done a 2-lines bug fix that increase performance of 5%.. (which is great.. but maybe a bit exaggerated..)
There might be a way method level @authors can be added in to the javadoc, I've never really looked into it but I think I remember reading it somewhere. Should I look further?
If I make the proposed logging changes for example (Issue #100), I'm hardly going to place my name in all Xith3D classes... Currently I have only placed my @author on classes which I have majorly changed or created from scratch - anyone wanting to see what my major contributions are can see from this. Someone wanting to see my total contributions can look at the CVS mailing list archives that I linked to previously.
I'm certainly all for encouraging Xith3D contributions
I personally would rather smaller changes not be noted in class level @author tags but if everyone else would prefer that I'm happy to change the policy.
Will.
