wiki collaboration

[Paul W. Frields]

On Fri, 2007-11-09 at 07:38 -0800, Karsten Wade wrote:
> Just a quick reminder to those who are new to collaborating with wikis.
> 
> One of the great things about a wiki is the ability for you to watch one
> or more pages for edits.  Then, if there is something to correct or add
> in an edit from someone else, you can just go fix it.
> 
> For you folks who are newer to the team, you may have experienced me or
> another editor dropping by your document and doing a whole bunch of
> corrections, usually of the markup/wiki syntax, and often adjusting
> grammar or tense.
> 
> This is to be expected (we all need reminders of markup syntax and to
> use active tense), and it is a good way for you to learn while you are
> doing the work.  I try to appear early enough in the work process that I
> can help you with pointers, so it helps the rest of your future work.
> 
> So don't feel singled out when one of us jumps on your page and uses it
> as an example to you of how to do things the Fedora Docs way.  It
> happens with everyone. :)  ... and unfortunately, the comment field is
> just big enough to put in pointers to e.g.
> WikiEditing#MarkingTechnicalContent and to type in much more than that.
> 
> You all are doing great work; there is so much activity on some days the
> wiki edits just blur by.  It makes my heart sing. :)

Right on!  Especially since we have many participants who are non-native
English speakers, no one is required to do things perfectly -- EVER,
much less the first time. :-)  The wiki is all about incremental
improvements by using the Power of Many Hands.  That makes it a great
place to draft documents, especially if you don't feel confident with
the more developer-ish tools.

For lengthy documents, I might make changes up to a certain point, then
ask the author(s) to go back into the rest of the document and apply the
same kind of changes.  Some of the things that Karsten has wisely
pointed out for me in the past, and which might help you as you write,
include:

1.  If you see the word "will," you probably need to rewrite the
sentence.
2.  You should almost never need parentheses ( ).
3.  Avoid "I," "me," "we," "us," and -- to the extent possible -- "you."
4.  Read and re-read the Style Guide,
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide, for hints. :-)

Thanks for all the contributions -- like Karsten, I'm really happy about
the fact that people are really rolling up their sleeves and getting
their hands dirty!

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
           Fedora Project: http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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