Self-introduction: Adam Lax
by adam lax
Dear Fedora Project community,
I'm very interested in getting involved as a volunteer to help with open
source projects to develop my technical writing skills. I come from the
higher education/ non profit sector with over 4 years of experience
teaching college level writing to ESL students. I'm looking to transition
into technical writing and would like to get more direct experience with
the documentation process by volunteering on a project.
- *What other projects or writing have you worked on in the past? *I
don't have any direct experience with technical writing and documentation
but I have extensive experience writing content, proofreading, and editing
at a variety of organizations including the University of Maryland,
American University, and the American Councils for International Education.
I'm currently working with a financial advisor to create a monthly
newsletter for his clients informing them of various investment strategies,
trends, and history.
- *What level and type of computer skills do you have?* I have a limited
knowledge of Python and have professional proficiency in microsoft office
programs and salesforce.
- *What other skills do you have that might be applicable? User
interface design, other so-called soft skills (people skills), programming,
etc.* My background is in ESL instruction and advising international
students at the university level so I have strong verbal and writing
communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills. As an ESL
instructor, I have taught college level writing for over four years thus I
have honed a deep understanding of writing mechanics, structure, grammar,
punctuation, and word usage. That work has also helped me develop strong
editing and proofreading skills applicable to these kinds of documentation
projects. I' m not sure if it's applicable, but I spent over 4 years in
China and I have a working professional proficiency in Mandarin Chinese.
- *What makes you an excellent match for the project? *I believe my
extensive writing, editing, and proofreading experience can be quite
helpful for the documentation required for these open source projects. As
an educator, I have honed a strong ability to explain orally and in written
form concepts, ideas, and tasks in a thorough and step-by-step manner for
those who are not familiar with them or even speak English as a first
language.
- *GPG KEYID and fingerprint*
-
Comment: User-ID: <adamplax(a)gmail.com>
Comment: a.k.a.: APLax
Comment: Created: 10/6/2020 2:48 PM
Comment: Expires: 10/30/2022 12:00 PM
Comment: Type: 3,072-bit RSA (secret key available)
Comment: Usage: Signing, Encryption, Certifying User-IDs
Comment: Fingerprint: 54B838963BE5AA2D2A47AD42BF9626E2298AE49E
- *Let us know what kind of topics you're interested in and what time
zone you are in. We'd like to pair you with a mentor
<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project_mentors> to help you get
started.*
- I'd like to help with Fedora docs and I'm in the EDT time zone.
Thank you very much!
Best,
Adam Lax
International Education Policy, MA
2015-2016 US Department of State Fulbright Scholar:
aplchinafulbright.weebly.com
Cell number- 301-758-1125
3 years, 6 months
Fedora 33 release notes are now open!
by Petr Bokoc
Hi everyone,
Fedora 33 Beta is out now[0], so it's time to start writing release
notes once again! (Also, apologies for the delay, I was away all of last
week.)
As usual, we aim to cover notable Changes[1]. Ben Cotton has been
tracking those in our release-notes issues for us, which allows us to
grab a list of everything that needs to be documented[2].
Branch f33 is ready for your pull requests.
= What to do
1. Pick one or more issues in the list linked above.
2. Open each issue you picked, and click the Take button on the right to
claim it. (If you claim an issue but later find out you don't have time
to write about it, remove yourself from the issue ASAP so others can see
it's free and take it!)
3. Find some information about the issue. A lot of them have plenty of
info in them already; if not, find out who's responsible for the change,
and talk to them on IRC or via mail. Of course it's always better if you
try to do research before you ask questions. Note that you might not
always be able to reach the owner in a reasonable timeframe; in that
case just do your best, I'll be reviewing PRs, so if we publish
something wrong, it's on me.
4. Write a release note about the issue. If you're not sure how exactly
a release note looks, check out some of the previous releases for
inspiration. We don't want any long, overly technical texts, the release
notes are meant to highlight changes, not to tell people how to use
something.
5. Now the workflow diverges based on your permissions and technical
skills:
5a. If you know how to use git and asciidoc, we'd appreciate if you
wrote up the release note and sent a pull request against the main repo,
branch "f33". Your contributions should go into one of the files in
"modules/release-notes/pages/", which one exactly depends on the
contents of the change you're documenting. Use the "build.sh" and
"preview.sh" scripts in the repository root to preview your changes
locally; see the repository README for specific instructions. If you
can't see the section where you added your contributions at all, make
sure it's included in "modules/release-notes/nav.adoc".
5b. If the above sounds like gibberish to you, it's fine: just add a
comment with your text into the issue, and ping me on IRC/Telegram or
through e-mail; I'll mark it up for you and make sure your contribution
appears in the final document.
See also our recently contributor docs[3] for some additional info and
tips; especially the "Git for docs writers" section if you're not
familiar with the system.
If anyone has any questions, go ahead and ask either here on the list or
on IRC, I'm happy to help. The current schedule shows the preferred
final release target on October 20, which only gives us about 3 weeks to
do this. (Again, apologies for the delay.) The release date may slip,
but don't count on it.
Happy writing!
Petr
[0] https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-the-release-of-fedora-33-beta/
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/33/ChangeSet
[2]
https://pagure.io/fedora-docs/release-notes/issues?status=Open&search_pat...
[3] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-docs/
3 years, 6 months
Question About Doc Grammar Fixes
by Caleb McKee
Hello,
I was proofreading and editing the autoupdates.adoc page, and I was just
curious about certain contributor conventions. Since my background is in
English, I noticed there were some grammatical errors on the page here and
there. For example, I would find a capital letter after a colon or a comma
splice. What's the convention on editing these?
I also noticed that from the wiki conversions, key file names were missing
so I added those back in. I plan on making a pull request for the changes
soon. Actually, it's my first pull request ever. I'll try to perform it
autonomously, but I may have a question or two in the process. I'll look
for more docs to review soon.
Thanks for your support
3 years, 6 months
Personal Introduction
by Caleb McKee
Hello,
My name is Caleb McKee. I introduced myself on Telegram, but I assume it's
a good idea to drop a message here as well.
I'm an English graduate who has had an interest in tech for a while. It
started with my own computer build, then I began playing with HTML/CSS,
JavaScript, and C#. I'm definitely not at developer level, but I know the
fundamentals. I also spent quarantine getting CompTIA A+ certified as well.
I want to help out, but I know I can't dedicate an immense amount of time
right now. 2-5 hours a week is something that I might be able to manage.
Petr from the Telegram group chat was kind enough to point out the
quick-docks repository where I found some docs commented out with "//FIX
ME". I read through the autoupdates page and thought I could start with
that?
To be honest, I'm very new to technical writing so I may ask for some
guidance, especially when it comes to Fedora content. Anyone can also feel
free to let me know if they have ideas for newbie contribution.
Thanks
3 years, 6 months
