release notes life cycle

[Kam]

Jason, I would like to help but (being new to the Fedora docs process) I am unsure what to do or how to go about it. A pointer to a summarized guide would be helpful.

--
Kam
http://kamsalisbury.com
GPG key: FAF1751E

-----Original Message-----

From:  Jason Taylor <jmtaylor90 at gmail.com>
Subj:  Re: release notes life cycle
Date:  Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:00 am
Size:  3K
To:  For participants of the Documentation Project <fedora-docs-list at redhat.com>

On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 18:18 -0700, Dale Bewley wrote:
> When looking at the Beat content, it's somewhat confusing and cumbersome
> to determine what is complete for the pending release and what isn't.
> 
> For example, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageNotes is
> not assigned to anyone, but some work has been done since F9. It's easy
> for one to assume at first glance that this page is up to date. However,
> most of the content is still F9 content.
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Docs%2FBeats%
> 2FPackageNotes&diff=53835&oldid=12111
> 
> It might be nice if Beats were reset to empty before beginning work on
> the next version release notes.
> 
> I may do that as the first step when I begin looking for slots I can
> hopefully fill in F10. The criteria I would use for finding F9 content
> would be edits made around May 2008 and earlier.
> 
> At some point this all migrates to docbook on docs.fp.o, after that is
> set in "stone", what has been the practice in the past? What is the time
> horizon when updates to previous release notes on the wiki becomes less
> productive than work on the next release? 
> 
> I would think at that point the Beats should be lobotomized and a call
> for Beat authors for the next release made. It should happen early
> enough that authors don't have to dig through the entire development
> cycle of bugs and email for clues, and can hopefully document changes
> during development. One month after GA? At Alpha release?
> 
> During the period where Beat pages are empty, with the help of a
> template, perhaps the wayward user could follow a link at the top of the
> page to the current docs.fp.o page.
> 
> Thoughts?
> --
> Dale

A couple of thoughts, since you brought up changes... :) After the F10
freeze/release, I planned on garnering support for doing a
vetting/reorganization of the structure and content of the notes. We
have beats for seemingly random packages (samba comes to mind).We also
seem to have a general lack of beat writers (this is based on feedback
or lack of that I got from an email sent to all beat writers and/or
technical contacts).  

There was some discussion earlier (I can't find the thread atm) about
reorganizing the structure to a more function oriented structure
(network admins, desktop users, developers). I think this is the way to
go. In my mind this gives us a target to base our writing around.
Instead of trying to find information on an existing beat that may or
may not have information we find out what the features of the release
are and what the defined audiences will find relevant. I realize
defining relevancy may take some work and discussion...

Some of the existing beats should be removed/deprecated from the list as
they are no longer relevant. Perhaps once we look at how we want to
organize/re-organize the notes it will be easier to determine what beats
we want? PackageNotes mentioned above was a catchall. I would like to
remove these ambiguities which should be possible with some
reorganization. I am wondering/hoping that getting writers will be
easier as the workflow can be more defined? Thoughts...?

The reason I mentioned this in reply to Dale, is that if we can get a
fix on what we want to do as a Project with regards to the release notes
we can get it implemented faster.

-Jason



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