2:20 p.m.
Greetings all,
I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
to start and get my foot in the door.
I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for my
user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
where to get started contributing.
Cheers,
--Ericg--
9:20 a.m.
Hi Eric! Welcome to Fedora Documentation Project.
Some info for new contributors is available on the wiki:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project.
For info about how we work and what tools we use you can take a look at
our Documentation Guide
(http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/D...).
It's a fairly long read, but don't be intimidated - it covers more than
you need right now. I'd recommend going through chapters 1-3
(Introduction, Documentation Workflow, and Brief Introduction to
DocBook), but don't worry about learning everything described there
immediately.
You should also join us on IRC. Most of us hang out in #fedora-docs on
FreeNode, and every Monday at 14:00 UTC we have an hour long meeting in
#fedora-meeting. This meeting is a great way to stay in touch and find
something to do, so you should definitely come say hi if you can. (The
meetings aren't mandatory though.)
A few people also hold "office hours" on certain times each week - that
means someone is guaranteed to be in the channel and ready to answer any
questions you might have. Office hours are every Thursday 12:00 to 13:00
US/Mountain time (held by randomuser), and every Sunday 16:00-18:00 UTC
(lnovich).
If you can't make it to meetings, no problem - just ask in our channel.
You might not get a reply immediately, but usually someone will see your
messages and reply or point you to a specific person you should ask.
Most active people in the channel are randomuser (the docs project
leader), Sparks, jsmith, zoglesby, lnovich, jhradilek, pkovar, me
(pbokoc)... and a bunch of others I'm surely forgetting.
You should also talk to randomuser about your FAS group memberships.
Active contributors are mostly from the US and Europe, which might make
finding people on IRC somewhat more difficult if you're from, say,
Australia or New Zealand (because timezones). If you can't get a hold of
anyone, just use this list.
As for what work is there to do, I think that will be better explained
in real time (on IRC), this mail is already long enough. Come say hi in
the channel if you can and we'll get you something to work on - probably
some F21 Alpha Release Notes beats as they're our top priority right now.
Cheers,
Petr
On 08/21/2014 09:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
Greetings all,
I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
to start and get my foot in the door.
I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for my
user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
where to get started contributing.
Cheers,
--Ericg--
10:38 a.m.
On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
Greetings all,
I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
to start and get my foot in the door.
I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for my
user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
where to get started contributing.
Cheers,
--Ericg--
Welcome Eric! I'm glad you've decided to join us. Petr has covered
the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully we'll hear
more from you. Ironically the docs on joining docs sometimes need the
most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite add up, ask
questions or take the initiative and edit. We can get so focused on
today's priority that maintenance might need someone to complain :)
That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind. ( You'll notice
that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before they're fully
formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts into
productive ideas - or slag... ) You're coming from a part of the Fedora
community we don't hear a lot from. It's always bothered me that there
are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit into forums
discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them often. Fedora
Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach, getting
feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas like
fedoraforum.org, and using the information to incrementally improve our
offerings or write new things targeting their needs.
Eric, as an established participant there, where do you think we need to
improve to better address the needs of that section of the user base?
Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we could address
with better docs? Do you have any ideas about how we can establish an
effective feedback loop?
While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the release
notes! At this stage in their development, we're doing a lot of
research and dumping info into the wiki at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats . Later the
info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git repository
for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.
Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write about, we can
find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what would you like
to do?
--
-- Pete Travis
- Fedora Docs Project Leader
- 'randomuser' on freenode
- immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org
1:35 p.m.
Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the "Lets
get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.
I shall look over the 'reading material' above and take it to heart.
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.
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 (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG). There's nothing
majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:
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...
https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash
2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a horizontal
image set would have fit perfectly.
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.
Now onto Pete's question...
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. Why are
the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it forums.fedoraforums.org and
not forums.fedoraproject.org? 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.
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.
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.
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Pete Travis <me(a)petetravis.com> wrote:
On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
> seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
> to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
> learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
> Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
> to start and get my foot in the door.
>
> I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for my
> user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
> where to get started contributing.
>
>
> Cheers,
> --Ericg--
Welcome Eric! I'm glad you've decided to join us. Petr has covered
the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully we'll hear
more from you. Ironically the docs on joining docs sometimes need the
most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite add up, ask
questions or take the initiative and edit. We can get so focused on
today's priority that maintenance might need someone to complain :)
That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind. ( You'll notice
that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before they're fully
formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts into
productive ideas - or slag... ) You're coming from a part of the Fedora
community we don't hear a lot from. It's always bothered me that there
are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit into forums
discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them often. Fedora
Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach, getting
feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas like
fedoraforum.org, and using the information to incrementally improve our
offerings or write new things targeting their needs.
Eric, as an established participant there, where do you think we need to
improve to better address the needs of that section of the user base?
Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we could address
with better docs? Do you have any ideas about how we can establish an
effective feedback loop?
While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the release
notes! At this stage in their development, we're doing a lot of
research and dumping info into the wiki at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats . Later the
info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git repository
for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.
Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write about, we can
find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what would you like
to do?
--
-- Pete Travis
- Fedora Docs Project Leader
- 'randomuser' on freenode
- immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org
--
docs mailing list
docs(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/docs
2:13 p.m.
As a follow up about community outreach... As a user I follow
planet.fedoraproject.org religiously. Just noticed the "Sub-Projects"
section on the left side a minute ago. "Oh! Documentation has their own
planet! Cool! *Clicks link*" ... dead link:
https://blogs.fedoraproject.org/wp/docsproject/
--Ericg--
On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Eric Griffith <egriffith92(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the
"Lets
get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.
I shall look over the 'reading material' above and take it to heart.
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.
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 (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG). There's
nothing majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:
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...
https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash
2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a horizontal
image set would have fit perfectly.
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.
Now onto Pete's question...
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.
Why are the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it
forums.fedoraforums.org and not forums.fedoraproject.org? 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.
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.
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.
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Pete Travis <me(a)petetravis.com> wrote:
> On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
> > Greetings all,
> >
> > I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
> > seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
> > to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
> > learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
> > Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
> > to start and get my foot in the door.
> >
> > I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for
my
> > user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
> > where to get started contributing.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --Ericg--
>
> Welcome Eric! I'm glad you've decided to join us. Petr has covered
> the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully we'll hear
> more from you. Ironically the docs on joining docs sometimes need the
> most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite add up, ask
> questions or take the initiative and edit. We can get so focused on
> today's priority that maintenance might need someone to complain :)
>
> That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind. ( You'll notice
> that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before they're fully
> formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts into
> productive ideas - or slag... ) You're coming from a part of the Fedora
> community we don't hear a lot from. It's always bothered me that there
> are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit into forums
> discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them often. Fedora
> Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach, getting
> feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas like
> fedoraforum.org, and using the information to incrementally improve our
> offerings or write new things targeting their needs.
>
> Eric, as an established participant there, where do you think we need to
> improve to better address the needs of that section of the user base?
> Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we could address
> with better docs? Do you have any ideas about how we can establish an
> effective feedback loop?
>
> While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the release
> notes! At this stage in their development, we're doing a lot of
> research and dumping info into the wiki at
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats . Later the
> info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git repository
> for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.
>
> Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write about, we can
> find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what would you like
> to do?
>
> --
> -- Pete Travis
> - Fedora Docs Project Leader
> - 'randomuser' on freenode
> - immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org
>
>
>
> --
> docs mailing list
> docs(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe:
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/docs
>
1:47 a.m.
On 08/24/2014 12:35 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the
"Lets get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.
Exciting! I'm
glad you're making time to participate, but of course
school comes first.
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.
I shall look over the 'reading material' above and take it to
heart.
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.
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!
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 (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG).
There's nothing majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:
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...
https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash
2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a horizontal
image set would have fit perfectly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now onto Pete's question...
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.
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? :)
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.
Why are the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it
forums.fedoraforums.org <http://forums.fedoraforums.org> and not
forums.fedoraproject.org <http://forums.fedoraproject.org>? 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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Pete Travis <me(a)petetravis.com
<mailto:me@petetravis.com>> wrote:
On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
> seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that
I wish
> to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
> learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
> Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
> to start and get my foot in the door.
>
> I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS
for my
> user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
> where to get started contributing.
>
>
> Cheers,
> --Ericg--
Welcome Eric! I'm glad you've decided to join us. Petr has covered
the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully we'll hear
more from you. Ironically the docs on joining docs sometimes need the
most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite add
up, ask
questions or take the initiative and edit. We can get so focused on
today's priority that maintenance might need someone to complain :)
That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind. ( You'll
notice
that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before they're fully
formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts into
productive ideas - or slag... ) You're coming from a part of the
Fedora
community we don't hear a lot from. It's always bothered me that
there
are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit into forums
discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them often. Fedora
Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach, getting
feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas like
fedoraforum.org <http://fedoraforum.org>;, and using the
information to incrementally improve our
offerings or write new things targeting their needs.
Eric, as an established participant there, where do you think we
need to
improve to better address the needs of that section of the user base?
Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we could address
with better docs? Do you have any ideas about how we can establish an
effective feedback loop?
While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the release
notes! At this stage in their development, we're doing a lot of
research and dumping info into the wiki at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats .
Later the
info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git repository
for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.
Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write about, we can
find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what would
you like
to do?
--
-- Pete
[1] http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/category/hyperkitty/
--
-- Pete Travis
- Fedora Docs Project Leader
- 'randomuser' on freenode
- immanetize(a)fedoraproject.org
2:35 p.m.
On 8/25/2014 2:47 AM, Pete Travis wrote:
On 08/24/2014 12:35 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
> Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the
> "Lets get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.
Exciting! I'm glad you're making time to participate, but of course
school comes first.
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.
Whoopsies! Is this better? Don't want to be accidentally
making a faux pas!
> 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
> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG). There's nothing
> majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:
>
> 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...
> https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash
>
> 2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a
> horizontal image set would have fit perfectly.
>
> 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.
>
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.
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.
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.
Oh! Okay! I
didn't realize that the page was the specific domain of its
own dedicated SIG. I might play around a little bit but I'll try to not
step on anyone's toes. I'll fire off a few emails to the lists and just
post a heads up. As I said, it was just one thing that struck me as
"odd" or "out of place" when I was combing through the wiki pages on
contributing.
> Now onto Pete's question...
>
> 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.
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? :)
For the most part, yes, I was being rhetorical. Rahul and I have talked
briefly on the Phoronix forums, Adam and I a bit more (didn't realize
Adam was so young haha).
My perspective on these messages and topic might need a bit explaining:
I pretty much use 2 distros when it comes to Linux.... Fedora and Arch.
Its no secret in the Linux community that Arch probably has the best
wikis and documentation that are available, better in some ways than
Gentoo. Not all of its good, but a lot of it is very on-point. If you
are looking for content writers, people who are taking the time to write
guides and howto's, the forums might be a good place to check.
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.
You bring up a good point about following threads gets to be a pain, I
completely agree. But if you happen to see the same name pop up again
and again, someone who is doing good quality work on a consistent
basis... A quick private message saying "Hey, I see you doing good work.
The Docs team could use you, even if you just copy-paste the guides to
the Wiki." You might get a new Docs team member out of it. On the same
angle, the person sending the message doesn't have to be -You-
specifically, I would be more than happy to keep my eye on the forums
for those who are posting good content, as I enjoy the "social" aspect
of the forums.
> Why are the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it
> forums.fedoraforums.org <http://forums.fedoraforums.org> and not
> forums.fedoraproject.org <http://forums.fedoraproject.org>? 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.
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.
> 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.
>
> 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.
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].
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.
Oh of course, its far harder for someone to actually step up and try to
make things better. I will definitely check into Mairin's blog, it
sounds like a very interesting project.
Out of pure curiosity, I know the forums are third party... but why? Why
were they never made official? Fedora's got the wiki, the docs, the
mailing lists, irc, Fedora planet... but not forums? Just seems like an
odd base to not have covered I suppose.
Not sure if my previous message came through, but does anyone know why
the Documentation link on planet.fedoraproject.org is a dead link?
-- Eric --
---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is
active.
http://www.avast.com
6:10 p.m.
Regards
Leslie
Mr. Leslie Satenstein
SENT FROM MY OPEN SOURCE LINUX SYSTEM.
________________________________
From: Eric Griffith <egriffith92(a)gmail.com>
To: For participants of the Documentation Project <docs(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: New member
On 8/25/2014 2:47 AM, Pete Travis wrote:
> On 08/24/2014 12:35 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
>> Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the
>> "Lets get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.
> Exciting! I'm glad you're making time to participate, but of course
> school comes first.
>
> 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.
Whoopsies! Is this better? Don't want to be accidentally making a faux pas!
>> 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
>> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG). There's nothing
>> majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:
>>
>> 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...
>> https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash
>>
>> 2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a
>> horizontal image set would have fit perfectly.
>>
>> 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.
>>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
Oh! Okay! I didn't realize that the page was the specific domain of its
own dedicated SIG. I might play around a little bit but I'll try to not
step on anyone's toes. I'll fire off a few emails to the lists and just
post a heads up. As I said, it was just one thing that struck me as
"odd" or "out of place" when I was combing through the wiki pages on
contributing.
>> Now onto Pete's question...
>>
>> 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.
> 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? :)
For the most part, yes, I was being rhetorical. Rahul and I have talked
briefly on the Phoronix forums, Adam and I a bit more (didn't realize
Adam was so young haha).
My perspective on these messages and topic might need a bit explaining:
I pretty much use 2 distros when it comes to Linux.... Fedora and Arch.
Its no secret in the Linux community that Arch probably has the best
wikis and documentation that are available, better in some ways than
Gentoo. Not all of its good, but a lot of it is very on-point. If you
are looking for content writers, people who are taking the time to write
guides and howto's, the forums might be a good place to check.
>
> 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.
You bring up a good point about following threads gets to be a pain, I
completely agree. But if you happen to see the same name pop up again
and again, someone who is doing good quality work on a consistent
basis... A quick private message saying "Hey, I see you doing good work.
The Docs team could use you, even if you just copy-paste the guides to
the Wiki." You might get a new Docs team member out of it. On the same
angle, the person sending the message doesn't have to be -You-
specifically, I would be more than happy to keep my eye on the forums
for those who are posting good content, as I enjoy the "social" aspect
of the forums.
>> Why are the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it
>> forums.fedoraforums.org <http://forums.fedoraforums.org> and not
>> forums.fedoraproject.org <http://forums.fedoraproject.org>? 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.
> 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.
>> 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.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
> 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].
>
> 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.
Oh of course, its far harder for someone to actually step up and try to
make things better. I will definitely check into Mairin's blog, it
sounds like a very interesting project.
Out of pure curiosity, I know the forums are third party... but why? Why
were they never made official? Fedora's got the wiki, the docs, the
mailing lists, irc, Fedora planet... but not forums? Just seems like an
odd base to not have covered I suppose.
Not sure if my previous message came through, but does anyone know why
the Documentation link on planet.fedoraproject.org is a dead link?
-- Eric --
Leslie here
My view is that the mailing list is not as good as a forum, but should summarize what was
discussed on a forum.
It is in most aways less friendly, as one could miss an email, or have it land in the SPAM
folder or whatever. With forums, we can raise comments and obtain a larger source of
volunteers. We could even dish out work in small portions and then get someone to
consolidate the results. It also allows one to rework what someone wrote, so as to have
it more easily read and understood.
Another benefit of forums, is the speed of response, which is one thing that we struggle
with by using chat or emails.
One of my pet peeves is the writing style, that irks me. I try to call my writing style
slang free and based on facilitating the text translation to French or English.
As I see it, the author writes some text, and even if it is rough, it is accepted as is.
I always tried to convey to my IT students that the should present their writing to their
significant partner, to see if the writing is lucid.
The preferred use of a forum is more productive than trying to get particpants around the
globe together at one time for an IRC chat. My peers in Australia and New Zealand are up
to 13 hours difference from my local time.
Is there something along the forum lines that can be done for Fedora 22?
Leslie Satenstein
Montreal
3531
days inactive
3535
days old
7 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Eric Griffith -
Leslie S Satenstein -
Pete Travis -
Petr Bokoc