Guide/notes/document sponsorship

[Ben Cotton]

I'm a bit mixed on the issue.  On the one hand, I'm don't want to lose
the member -> committer -> publisher progression that jjmcd mentioned.
 I definitely don't think that we should hand new members commit
access everywhere right off.  This is both for the sanity of the
documents and the sanity of the new members.  I see no reason that new
members can't just upload patches to new or existing bugs until they
get more comfortable.  After some vague and poorly-defined period or
level of confidence/competence, then we can move from member to
committer.

Now having said that, I think it makes sense for committers to have
commit access to all the docs.  By the time someone is ready to make
serious contributions to multiple documents, they've probably been
around for a bit and it becomes less of a hassle to just have a single
group.  I don't think any of the doc owners are so territorial that
they would object to having extra help.

I guess the TL;DR is that a single group is a good idea, provided it
is paired with some kind of seasoning process.

This brings up a somewhat-related point that we can move into another
thread if it makes more sense, but one thing that would tie in with
this is more guidance for new members.  I've been in the group for
nearly a year now, and everyone has been very helpful, but I think the
following two things would really help improve the new member
experience:

1. assigned mentoring for new members.  If there was a pool of
experienced hands who were willing to serve as members, then as each
new member joined, they'd have someone who was their point of contact
for learning their way around FAS, git, Publican, etc.  Like in
Euchre, it's often to learn from one person than several.

2. a regular start-to-finish guide class.  I know I've seen the
write-ups for the guide process go by at least once, but I think it
would be helpful to have an IRC class once every release or two where
we take a dummy guide, branch it for the new release, update the
content, prepare for translation, etc.  This would also be a good
refresher for the members who have forgotten some of the steps or
haven't done certain parts before.

I realize this is easier said than done, we all have other
responsibilities to take care of and Fedora doesn't exactly pay us all
that well, but as time permits I think this would improve the Docs
experience for our members, and likely the quality of the
documentation we produce for the community.  I also realize that my
last sentence was pretty long and that's usually a sign that it's time
for me to shut up, so I will. :-)


BC

-- 
Ben Cotton