[Fedora Project Wiki] Update of "Docs/Drafts/DesktopUserGuide/Desktops" by JohnBabich

[Karsten Wade]

On Sat, 2007-05-19 at 20:12 +0300, John Babich wrote:
> I guess I'll have to do my very rough drafts offline from now on :-)

While I'm sure you have your tongue in your cheek with this comment
(hence, the smiley), I want to take the chance to point out why
community documentation *can* be better than solo-doc writing.  It is
because of open collaborative teamwork.

The open collaborative process gives us a chance to fix problems early
and often.  If writers keep their prose secretive until they feel it is
perfect, several things may happen:

* If it is not perfect, there is less time and inclination to fix it
* The longer you hold in to a piece of writing, the harder it is to let
go of it when changes must be made
* Others are given less of a chance to learn from common mistakes and
guidelines.
* Ongoing editing (a strength of a content control such as Wiki or CVS)
is harder to do when content arrives in huge blobs.

(Note that all this can be said about code.)

The last one is where I often fall short.  I follow the traditional
route of saving my edit for the end, and then I have a HUGE amount of
work ahead of me -- all of the work needs to be done in one pass, and
any lessons I want to pass (similar to Paul's) are less visible when
passed during a massive edit campaign.

For example, a few weeks ago I actually did some editing of FWN before
the writer's deadline.  The tips I passed along in that edit were then
followed for newly written content, which reduced my final edit
workload.

- Karsten, hoping he can do the same again tonight
-- 
   Karsten Wade, 108 Editor       ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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