Why are you lurking on the Documentation Project? (was Re: this is for you)

[Stuart Ellis]

On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 12:45 +0200, Peter Boy wrote:

> - I'm missing a list, something like a "Table Of Content", about the
>   topics, which should make up "Fedora Core Documentation" when it is
>   ready. If such a list were available I could check weather one of my
>   texts may fit

One of the main ideas of the Fedora Project is that it's community
driven, i.e. it provides a framework to enable people to do the things
that they themselves consider important. The Docs Project provides
various kinds of support and infrastructure for publishing and
maintaining documentation, but they are really processes and don't
impose restrictions on content. 

The requirements on content are something like this: the documents have
to be relevant to Fedora Core or Extras, and they have to be of
sufficient standard before publishing to the Website. The general
consensus is also that it is best to keep documents focused, and avoid
reinventing existing resources.

It's worth noting that not all of the process stuff has to be done at
once. If somebody feels more comfortable drafting in plain-text to get
started then we can help people with DocBook and CVS as they need it.

Similarly, the drafts aren't expected to be perfect. It's normal for
each round of editing and review to result in lots of action items, and
I hope that nobody is put off by the long e-mails that result from each
peer review. Praise just takes fewer words than discussing even trivial
fixes.

Hope that's a helpful summary.

> - I'm missing a list, who is currently working on *what*. There is the
>   bugzilla entry (102668), but it seams to be out of date.
>   (On the web there is a list of who is contributing, but not what)

The EditorAssignments page has been mentioned, which was written as a
stock list of everything that had come into contact with the project.
I'll rearrange it to reflect what's currently happening in CVS.

> As an example:
> 
> I just wrote a text (about 8 pages) to assist some of my staff members
> to set up a samba server on FC 4. I consired to contribute it to the
> fedora doku project. I found in Bugzilla 102668 that Aaron M. Epps is
> working on that topic, but I couldn't find information about the details
> of his work nor about the progress. I found nothing about it in CVS yet.
> So I don't know how to proceed, and the text is going to vanish in the
> desk drawer. 
> 
> > > * Do you need more directions?  
> > > * Do you want fewer restrictions?
> 
> Maybe both of it. Perhaps you should establish some sort of "early stage
> approval process". Something like:
> 
> -  address to whom send the titel and a draft toc for a documentation
>    text

<snip>

We have a "New Writers" page which we push as much as we can:

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/NewWriters

If there a way that we can make this easier to find, or clearer, then
please let me know.


-- 

Stuart Ellis

stuart at elsn.org

Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/

GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E  9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA 
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