Getting Involved Guide

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 19:17 +0900, Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
> <snip>
> > I don't think Paul is proposing that we *drop* end-user content, but
> > that we add writing and maintaining contributor content, put up as at
> > least the same level of priority.
> > 
> > We already have more end-user content to maintain than active Docs
> > contributors can handle.  Unless we find a way to grow this project,
> > we'll end up dropping some of that content (again.)
> > 
> 
> I personally think that is getting better since the new people involved
> in the project are helping out.

+1

As Paul said, this work is definitely going well; no marks against that
work!

Where I'm coming from, and I'm presuming Paul is thinking something
similar, is the experience of being in your shoes -- newer to the
project and enthusiastic about the content I'm working on.  I want to
see folks able to work on what pleases them.  I don't want you all to
get burned and burned out.  I want to see a healthy influx of new
contributors, ways to make it easy for them to do great stuff, and make
it desirable to old(er) hands to cycle in and out of Docs at-will.


> My definition of consolidate does not mean take control rather make it
> accessible to people who don't know where to look not the docs project
> write it and control it.

Excellent, then we are all talking about the same thing. :)

> In the two diagrams what do you mean by formal and informal?  

Formal - follows a process to get produced, including QA (draft, edit,
final), conversion to XML, translation, and publication.

Informal - casual editing space (wiki-based, one-off tutorials in
fedorapeople.org or mailing lists or fedoraforum.org), not necessarily
edited (wordsmith), tends to be responsive to immediate needs but not
written for the long-term (one-off, throw-away).

> I agree
> with the overall concept but I don't see how we can achieve this.

One step at a time. :)

There is an interim step between the two diagrams I showed, which is
here (section renamed):

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/WikiGardening#Docs_Services_Matrix

The near-term goal is to tackle "formal contributor content", and that
just means the Fedora GIG.  There is room for more there, but that is a
great start.

>   I had
> a concern that we were moving away from end user docs rather we are
> broadening our horizons.

Paul has a legitimate point that a metric tonne of end-user content
already exists, so we should have a discussion about our future in that.
I think we'll always do end-user content, but maybe we pick and choose
differently.  For example, a formal installation guide is something we
could always produce, but maybe we don't want to get into digital media
production.  It's fun stuff, but since it changes so often it might be
better as informal content.  Same folks could work on it, just with less
of a rigorous process.

Anyway, that is just an open discussion, not a foregone conclusion. :)

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41

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