Getting Involved Guide

[Marc Wiriadisastra]

On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 13:39 -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> Docs Project colleagues,

> 
> THE PUNCHLINE:  For its size, the Docs Project has done great things
> thanks to the energy and generosity of its members.  But in the post-F9
> era, we need to get off the treadmill of simple user/admin
> documentation, which is duplicated many times over in both the free and
> for-pay spheres, and move to goals that are more contributor-oriented.

<major snip>

I read the whole email so my comments should be prefaced that way.

I both agree and disagree I think the docs as a whole should provide
sufficient documentation to take someone who is relatively new to Linux,
note I didn't say computers, and provide them with knowledge along the
way to get to that contributor state.  I think that while the
contributor documentation is important for the longer term health of the
project it is no less important than the start either.

Myself I started using Linux from FC1. I was lucky I had a lot of help
from a friend otherwise I would have given up a long time ago.  Now I've
been around the project for awhile I feel the logical next step is to
help package, document and market Fedora for other people.  

I went through the steps of doing it. The documentation I found lacking
was contributor documentation because it is a changing flag pole.  The
examples of creating spec files and the rpmguide takes you so far.  The
rest of the documentation is scattered and the search function on the
wiki is a nightmare.

My first package took me about 2 months of fixes before it would
function.  Credit to the sponsor for sponsoring me and having the
patience a lot of people are to busy sadly.

While the docs project has spent it's time on user focused documentation
I envisage a situation similar to the gentoo set up.  Where the basic
documentation is there linked on the front of the wiki and updated.  At
the moment our documentation is scattered, which was the reason for my
previous email. The next step is the contributor documentation which is
also scattered throughout the wiki.  We are not far away from where I
envisage we should be.  Once the two docs are finished updating of the
smaller guides and linking them I think would solve a significant amount
of issues.

The next step is the contributor documentation which is mainly
consolidating the information that's already around.  

My 0.02

Marc

P.S. Excuse the hell long email.