F11: What went wrong? What went right?

[Eric Christensen]

During the Fedora Activity Day (FAD) after the SouthEast LinuxFest
(SELF) we discussed several topics concerning the Fedora 11 release.
The complete day's notes are available on the wiki[1] for your review.
I will be pasting from the wiki into these messages in order to
hopefully begin some discussion on how we can make our next release much
better.  I'll post this initial post and then provide comments within.
I encourage all Docs Project members provide their comments as well.

What went wrong 

Changing Release Notes data
* Two days before F11 was released, the release notes beats on wiki were
still changing 
* Audio change 
* Networking issue 
* Expect full-timers to include info

Secret cabal-driven freezes that aren't communicated
* (leading to people not knowing about freezes occurring and when RN
data needed.) 
* this is also a comms problem on our part.

Too many rogue documents.

Getting RPMs pushed - going through f13 takes as much time as building
the rpm
* We need to be able to push packages ourselves (i.e. need instructions,
guidelines, etc.) 
* Not enough packagers in Docs 
* Only f13 and stickster know how to push RNs -- need more
co-maintainers

Could use more clarity understanding on what is implied by freezes,
trans, etc

Need more interaction with L10n

Bugs not being filled out in timely manner
* Many RN bugs arrive at the last minute that were known early on
-indeed (SEE ABOVE)

Need to centralize where bugs are filed (too many choices -- BZ, Trac
instances...) 
* BZ even has too many subchoices (components, etc.)

Poor notations on where/how bugs/issues should be filed

Wiki search SUCKS BIG TIME!!

No good documentation on moving things from wiki to DocBook/Publican
stores

Could use more consistency in wiki markup

Need better documentation on what we want to use from DocBook markup

No good process for dealing with orphan documents

RN documents are not all in one place (about-fedora, readme's, etc.)

Lack of understanding of release schedule process

Publican and Fedora/GNOME lang codes not consistent
* Not at all clear how login lang selected is used

Translators having too much work.

Release notes are ill-defined
* Too long for normal users to read 
* Beats have inconsistent levels of content 
* Need some separation

We don't know anything about visit statistics for docs.fp.o

We need a more rigorous freeze on wiki release note beats
* Notes to f-docs-l, f-trans-l f-dev-l several times before each
milestone

BZ URL ulink default in Publican is unhelpful at best

Not clear if remaining (obsolete? unmaintained?) docs need conversion to
Publican (strikes me as part of undefined orphan process)

docs.fp.o site sucks (Mo knows)
* Need solution for people to install a doc just for their lang, in
their format 
* No CMS, no easy publishing, high barrier to participation 
* No real indexing...


What went right 

DOCS PEOPLE ROCK

Many more docs/guides available than ever before!! (we rocked!)

The wiki didn't asplode, but should have. (yay!)

Everything seemed a lot more organized this release
+ Packaging is easier than it sounds
+ The install guide is awesome
++ Some folks really rolled up their sleeves and helped - zoglesby,
laubersm, rudi

much better collaboration this release cycle

felt far less rushed than F10

stickster and quaid got out of the way and Sparks got run over

Brisbane folks represented, yo

Red Hat relicensed guide material in a way where we can generate
community presence around them



[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_Documentation_Meeting_2009_06_14

Thanks,
Eric