Content for Plone

[Paul W. Frields]

Hi all Docsters,

One of the issues which arose in the last Fedora Project Board meeting
was the steady (rising?) number of complaints about how many account
system requirements there are for new contributors.  We already know
that having no single sign-on capability makes the process harder than
it needs to be; this is already under discussion, so, since we Docs
folks can't solve that problem, let's talk about the problems we *can*
solve.

* Some new contributors are not familiar with GPG or SSH.

* The account system has a number of steps and an interface that is not
particularly warm and friendly for newcomers.

* The wiki pages speak to the requirements but do not give concrete (and
hopefully foolproof) command line steps for making things Just Work.  

* In many cases they link outbound to other pages for what is supposed
to be more information, but which is woefully inadequate.

The fact that we have so many people putting content on the wiki is
*fantastic*, but for canonical docs like "setting up a Fedora account,"
we need simple, step-by-step, procedural guides that don't send people
on a wild goose chase around the wiki.  We have a number of people who
have taken time and effort to come to us with offers of help, only to
find that juts getting to the point where they can contribute is an
enormous time sink!  This is just unacceptable IMHO, and I hope that you
share this opinion -- especially since we are the folks who should be
making this easy.

As a Board member, I'm coming to the Docs Project to ask for help in
getting content to the new Plone CMS *before* it goes live.  The Plone
CMS (refer to http://fpserv.fedoraproject.org/ if you have no idea what
I'm talking about) will, one day Real Soon Now, supplant or overarch the
wiki.  We want the launch of the Plone CMS to *lower the barriers* for
folks.  We want to get Docs support to identify and push this content
ASAP.

As a member of the Docs Project, I want to get people excited about a
chance for us to kickstart the CMS and get some additional project
visibility.  This idea of "lowering barriers" is nothing new for Docs --
it's something we've discussed often in Docs; something we've tried hard
to do with our toolchain, our attitudes, and this very list; and
something we can now exemplify in the community.  I think it will also
energize some of our newcomers and hopefully bring in other fresh faces
(and hands).

1.  Who wants to take on the Account Setup Guide?  Keep in mind you
won't have to do an awful lot of writing; it's mostly just collecting
written bits from the wiki, expanding them where needed, and making sure
everything flows nicely for an absolute newcomer.

2.  How can we make our toolchain do the majority of the work for the
CMS, like publishing and such?  This is a more subtle question that
probably needs some batting around, and will require coordination with
Websites.  Seth Vidal and I will help connect these dots, but folks here
are intimate with our toolchain and we should be prepared to come to the
table with some answers.

3.  It might be a good idea for us to start thinking about what docs
content is "faster-evolving" than we can or should keep up with in CVS.

Enough of my yakkin'.  Whaddaya say?  Let's boogie.

Input, please, and remember to use long descriptive sentences where
possible for those of us who are new at this game!  That's speaking not
just for newcomers, but for myself as well, a Bear of Very Little
Brain.  :-)  The foregoing is a brain dump from about midnight last
night, and I was fading fast, so if you see something scatterbrained,
please point it out in the interest of generating more sane discussion.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
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