Guide/notes/document sponsorship

[Eli]

My thoughts....

I totally agree with having single group access. At the bug stomping
party when I was comfortable with making commits I had to have someone
go in and approve me, for each guide.  With that same thought, I have
been helping out anywhere I can get my hands on.  So with me helping out
with 3 or 4 different projects it could have taken a lot more time for
me to get access to those guides, and created more work for others if I
could not help out.  Luckily I had most from the bug party. So it worked
out a little different for me. 

Also when I ask to help out on a particular guide, usually one of the
first questions is if I have been approved for commit access to that
guide. 
Single group would remove having to "check up" on (new)contributors to
see if they have been approved for each and every guide that they would
be allowed to work on. 

Seems like a good idea to me.

I hope this makes sense. :-)
-- 
Eli M

emad78 at fedoraproject.org
elijahm17 at gmail.com




-----Original Message-----
From: David Nalley <david.nalley at fedoraproject.org>
Reply-to: For participants of the Documentation Project
<docs at lists.fedoraproject.org>
To: For participants of the Documentation Project
<docs at lists.fedoraproject.org>
Subject: Guide/notes/document sponsorship
Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 22:10:43 -0400

During the Docs meeting tonight the issue of moving all documents
under a single fas group to grant access came up.

jjmcd brought up several issues - and I think they are worth
considering. More importantly he brought up a potential solution, that
I also think is worth considering. I'd encourage you to read through
the log if you weren't there.

Specifically as downsides to the proposal he enumerated the following:
* there is currently a progression from member -> committer ->
publisher - which we'd largely lose.
* currently new members tend to be 'frightened' by getting their first
document commit access, and giving it all in one fell swoop might
discourage contributors. (a new contributor echoed that he would feel
this way)

We discussed at length and said that the problems we were trying to solve were:
* Remove barriers to participation, particularly the 'need to find a
sponsor for $group during a hackfest' or to help someone get started
fresh.
* Make it easier for existing contributors to switch to a different
document/guide in the event there is some need or push such as the
recent work on the User Guide that laubersm led.

So jjmcd wisely noted that spreading sponsor powers around would solve
most of these problems. Heretofore, most of us have collected
memberships and sponsorship as needed. I'd like to propose at a
minimum (note that this isn't intended to be a rule or policy) that if
you own a document (release notes, a guide,
$other_repo_controlled_document) that you become a sponsor for all of
our documents. Additionally, someone who is comfortable with our
environment, and the processes should also get sponsor rights to all
of our documents to solve the above two problems.

One of the interesting things is that no one seemed concern about
granting access to people. We want to be pretty liberal with that.

So, I am bringing this to the list in hopes of generating more
discussion, and see if we want to do that moving forward.

Thoughts, comments, flames??

David Nalley