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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/24/2014 12:35 PM, Eric Griffith
wrote:<br>
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<div>Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this
week has been the "Lets get moved into college!" week
so: busy busy busy. <br>
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Exciting! I'm glad you're making time to participate, but of course
school comes first.<br>
<br>
One minor nitpick, and I won't bring it up again: The convention
with mailing lists is to either respond to things inline, like I'm
doing here, or to place your full reply below the post you are
responding to. It's easier to make sense of a message to read
chronologically, rather than read a response then read the message
that prompted it after. Not a big deal here, but on some lists you
*will* get lectured, every time.<br>
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<div>I shall look over the 'reading material' above and take
it to heart. <br>
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I can hop on IRC no problem, the only issue I might have is
the meetings unfortunately. I'm on USA Eastern which puts
the meeting at 0900-- right in the middle of one of my
classes. If there's minutes posted afterwards I can
definitely look over the minutes and take note of anything
that came up however. <br>
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Sure, there's no meeting time that works for everyone. You can
find us on IRC outside of the meeting time, or on the list - just
don't be a stranger!<br>
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I'd have no problem working on the F21 release notes, though
one page I did see that could use some love is actually the
wiki page for joining a Fedora SIG (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG"
target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG</a>).
There's nothing majorly wrong with it, just two things I
noticed:<br>
<br>
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<div>1) The artwork on there (no offense meant to Nitesh Narayan
Lal) seems to be using an older version of the Fedora Mascot
(Panda? Polar Bear? Teddy Bear? I never figured out what the
mascot was, to be honest), which makes it look off compared to
the artwork on say... <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash"
target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash</a><br>
<br>
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<div>2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a
horizontal image set would have fit perfectly. <br>
<br>
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<div>Now, I'm not claiming to be some great artist or anything
like that. But I can play around with the images in gimp a
bit, or if someone can point me in the direction of the artist
that DID the download splash mascot images I can talk to them
and see if they can do updated-versions of the Join_SIG page.
<br>
<br>
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The "Fedora Join SIG" is a specific group that works to help welcome
new contributors and find a place for them, and assist other groups
in refining their onboarding process. The page is targeted towards
people that want to join that group - not really people that want to
join the project in general. A lot of wiki pages end up like that;
'internally facing' content whose scope isn't quite clear unless you
know the story behind it.<br>
<br>
An FAS account with a contributor agreement gives you wiki
privileges, so you can edit that page to make it more clear. Do be
cognizant of the purpose of the page, though, and communicate with
those involved to let them know about your work. For the most part,
I'd encourage you to be bold and edit freely and responsibly. In
this case, since the page represents a group, it would be a good
idea to reach out to them for anything beyond minor edits. There's a
fedora-join mailing list, if you want to really dig in there.<br>
<br>
The design team does a lot of the artwork you find scattered around
Fedora's sites. I believe they have general design rules and
they'd probably help with source files if you wanted to work that
way, or they would probably humor requests if you have a project
with graphic design needs. For more authoritative information, you
should reach out to the design team. I'm sure you'd be welcome
there, too.<br>
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<div>Now onto Pete's question... <br>
<br>
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<div>How many SIG leaders sit on the forums? Or at least check
in? The ones that do... If you see someone posting a lot of
good content do you reach out to them and offer them to join
the SIG? For the Docs group I would suggest watching for good
tutorials, howto's, troubleshooting steps, etc. </div>
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I skim post titles and some content to figure out what the prevalent
issues are from time to time, but rarely participate. I've seen
Rahul Sundaram there, a longtime contributor, and sometimes Adam
Williamson. I know a few folks like Leigh Scott have transitioned
to sharing their efforts with the wider Fedora community. Otherwise-
*shrug* - you were being rhetorical, right? :)<br>
<br>
Like I said, it's an area of the community that Docs doesn't really
participate in. I'm sure there are a lot of effective tutorials
there, and I suspect there are just as many things that I wouldn't
feel comfortable recommending to users. Frankly, it gets to be a
lot to sift through - and for me, when faced with the choice between
keeping up with a meandering 10+ page forum thread and investing the
same time into working on documentation that addresses the same
problem without discussion, I'm going to be looking for the most
effective return (for everyone) on time invested. It's a personal
preference, really. It sounds like you like participating there,
and that's great. If you're interested, *you* could be the guy on
the Docs team that's watching the forums for good content and
gathering feedback on our drafts.<br>
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<div>Why are the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://forums.fedoraforums.org">forums.fedoraforums.org</a>
and not <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://forums.fedoraproject.org">forums.fedoraproject.org</a>?
Users will use the forums. Users will LOOK for forums for
help, not mailing lists. Mailing lists are good for
developers-- people who are constantly involved with the
project. Forums are one-shot affairs, they ask a question they
get an answer, they don't come back until they have another
problem. OR.. Forums are used by those trying to target the
one-shot users. The ones who are writing tutorials and
howto's, the ones who are looking out for the beginner users.
Why are they on the forums? Because they know their audience.
They know the target of their writings are not on the mailing
lists, they are on the forums. <br>
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I disagree here. People go to the forums because they are looking
for a social experience. They don't want to dig through
documentation to learn the whole system, they want a personalized
answer to the specific problem at hand. The documentation we work
on doesn't provide an interactive experience like that, and it
doesn't always provide ordered instructions for the user's set of
tasks for the day - but for the most part, all the answers *are*
there for the taking. Forums and mailing lists provide the crucial
role of helping people understand how to fit all the pieces
together. The difference between the two delivery methods is
largely personal preference.<br>
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<div>How much of the Fedora design process is done in the open
on the forums? I'm thinking of KDE's recent push with the
Visual Design Group. A lot of work is happening and being
talked about on blogs and such, but a lot is also happening in
the Visual Design Group's dedicated forums. They are engaging
users where the users are, and they are getting feedback.
Sure, sometimes this feedback is just "Yay" or "Nay" but
sometimes this feedback is in the form of a counter-proposal.
That person, the one who just drew up a counter-proposal, they
just got introduced to and dipped their feet into Visual
Design. Never know, might inspire them to help out and
contribute more often.<br>
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<br>
The metaphor and relationship I was trying to create isn't
perfect between the Fedora's Doc SIG and KDE's VDG, but I hope
I made my point with how much of a mirror there could be.<br>
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<br>
Little to none of Fedora's decision making process takes place on
fedoraforums.org . We're all part of the greater Fedora community,
but that 's a third party site dedicated to user support.
Everything that happens in Fedora is done completely in the open,
mailing lists are archived, meetings are logged, discussions are
public, announcements provided. Transparency is a *big* priority
within Fedora. The delivery method isn't what some might prefer,
but there are *lots* of active forums in many languages around the
world, and distributing these discussions among them would be a huge
effort. It's much more practical to have all this going on in one
place. There's some work being done to provide a more forum-like
gateway to these discussions that Mairin Duffy has been tracking on
her blog[1]. <br>
<br>
The difference might be that opportunities to make improvements are
just as open. It's easy to say "You should do this differently," but
not so easy to say "I will make this better," and follow through.
Those of us who are 'officially' contributing have made that
commitment, and we're glad to see you among us.<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Pete
Travis <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:me@petetravis.com" target="_blank">me@petetravis.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5">On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith
wrote:<br>
> Greetings all,<br>
><br>
> I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few
of you may have<br>
> seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have
decided that I wish<br>
> to finally contribute to the project itself. As I
just starting to<br>
> learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am
starting school for a<br>
> Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation
would be the best way<br>
> to start and get my foot in the door.<br>
><br>
> I am also requesting permission to join the "docs"
group on FAS for my<br>
> user (egriffith), as well as a
pointing-in-the-right-direction for<br>
> where to get started contributing.<br>
><br>
><br>
> Cheers,<br>
> --Ericg--<br>
<br>
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Welcome Eric! I'm glad you've decided to join us. Petr
has covered<br>
the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully
we'll hear<br>
more from you. Ironically the docs on joining docs
sometimes need the<br>
most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite
add up, ask<br>
questions or take the initiative and edit. We can get so
focused on<br>
today's priority that maintenance might need someone to
complain :)<br>
<br>
That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind. (
You'll notice<br>
that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before
they're fully<br>
formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts
into<br>
productive ideas - or slag... ) You're coming from a part
of the Fedora<br>
community we don't hear a lot from. It's always bothered me
that there<br>
are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit
into forums<br>
discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them
often. Fedora<br>
Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach,
getting<br>
feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas
like<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://fedoraforum.org"
target="_blank">fedoraforum.org</a>, and using the
information to incrementally improve our<br>
offerings or write new things targeting their needs.<br>
<br>
Eric, as an established participant there, where do you
think we need to<br>
improve to better address the needs of that section of the
user base?<br>
Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we
could address<br>
with better docs? Do you have any ideas about how we can
establish an<br>
effective feedback loop?<br>
<br>
While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the
release<br>
notes! At this stage in their development, we're doing a
lot of<br>
research and dumping info into the wiki at<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats"
target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats</a>
. Later the<br>
info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git
repository<br>
for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.<br>
<br>
Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write
about, we can<br>
find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what
would you like<br>
to do?<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
-- Pete </font></span><br>
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[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/category/hyperkitty/">http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/category/hyperkitty/</a><br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-- Pete Travis
- Fedora Docs Project Leader
- 'randomuser' on freenode
- <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:immanetize@fedoraproject.org">immanetize@fedoraproject.org</a></pre>
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