A new guide for newbies

[Jesús Franco]

El Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:33:09 +0530, Dilip P Kumar escribió:

> On Fri, 2010-11-26 at 16:51 -0500, Gerard Ryan wrote:
>> On 11/26/2010 04:24 PM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
>> > On 11/24/2010 11:28 AM, Dilip P Kumasi wrote:
>> >> 1. I am afraid I might break something
>> > 
>> > I wouldn't be afraid of breaking anything.  Our source repositories
>> > have the ability to roll back any changes that were made.

+1 I've been able to commit a few minor changes to a couple of published 
guides. Since i've witnessed how easy would be to roll back in case of a 
mistake (hopefully i've not committed any in this task), i feel more 
confident now to go on and try some tasks.

>> >> To solve the first problem, I want to ask if it is possible to start
>> >> a "Hello World" doc: A doc meant exclusively for newbies, that never
>> >> gets published for any release, where everyone is welcome to jump in
>> >> and get comfortable with the process without worrying about breaking
>> >> something.

Actually i'm making a similar proposal to run some hands-on sessions in 
fedora-classroom, about git+publican. Please take a look, it would be 
better if someone more experienced can give some guidance:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/classroom/2011-
January/000197.html

>> Hi Dilip and welcome!
>> 
>> I also like the idea of people creating a sandbox doc so they can get
>> comfortable with all the different tools. This could be done using a
>> fedorapeople account I think, since that now has git support. [0]

In the proposal i've done, everyone should be able to produce a first 
article using Publican in a maximum time of a week. We have plenty of 
tools to write synchronously a first draft authored by every student, in 
a live session of one-and-a-half-hour.

Based on my readings of POSSE;
These could be the tasks for a first introductory crash course:
-1) Setting up a fedorapeople space

0) Meet-up at #fedora-classroom. Describe essential tags and creation of 
first article, *inside a git repo* (local at least).

Jump to Gobby (prefered, alternative could be etherpad or git push/pull).

1) Everyone upload the skeleton of a first article and start to write.
2) Our teacher(s) could oversight errors and fix/suggest corrections.
3) Everybody could see what is doing his/her fellows and give feedback 
too.
4) Download their document writen in gobby and put in place of their 
local repo.

Followup asynchronously (if anyone gets in trouble, ask in the ML).

5) Commit the draft at his current state.
6) Push to fedorapeople remote git repo 
7) Follow writing the article until a good shape for it, and proofread it.
8) Push to git; publish to fedorapeople; announce in ML.
9) Choose another guide (not yours), cloning the repo for yourself.
10) Review and try to make improvements (if any). Create a patch and share 
in your fedorapeople space; announce to ML.
11) Test the patches and (optionally) merge/give write access to your repo 
to your contributors.
12) Share your work with the world and your feelings about the 
experience :)

Second synchronous session (taking over the world :D):

Lucky 13) Talk in #fedora-classroom about how the docs writers do their 
job for real: reading Beats; checking Bugs; reading more...
14) Choose a real guide you want to contribute and clone it for yourself.
    (We could take two steps to workaround network lags:
    * Take release notes and everyone choose one chapter/beat. We could 
      give just the copy of the chapter to work in;
    * Asking every "student" to choose a guide and clone *previous* to
      the second session, to work in real bugs of it).

     Would be better if the synchronous session could count on with more  
     than one teacher, maybe some guide owners? This would be the best way
     to learn new tags, and a richer experience by more writers.

"Final" steps would finish the job, and can be done asynchronously:

15) Of course, create the "git patch" with the job done and sent to 
	owner of the guide.
16) Optionally: apply for membership into that project or;
    start a new project, discussing it on the list for potential
    contributors.

I'm not saying these steps are the best way to run a course for new 
contributors, not even we should take this as the *next big task*.

At least we should to try a similar approach to these goals:

* Getting people interested in Docs project, to feel confident with the 
tools used, getting an useful product finished to share.
* Get them to work together into learning and meet each other, sharing 
more ideas to work in Fedora.
* Engage that people into solve a real need for an actually maintained 
guide.
* Getting more and more qualified people into the real for Docs Team.

Another approach could be through pages need love in the wiki, but if 
something is easier to solve through git even involving lots of files, 
it's anything but easy into wiki if too much pages being touched.

> I wonder how many people are interested in a sandbox doc for the whole
> community. I can play with Publican and a git repository on my computer
> if I am the only one who wants to do this. If anybody else is interested
> in this, then probably we can try a git repository using a fedorapeople
> account.
> 
> -Dilip (kambu)

You are not the only one dilip. And i'm pretty sure there are more people 
suscribed to this list willing a scale to jump into the boat of the team.

If the whole proposal seems too much work for nothing, you can count on 
me Dilip, to learn together and hopefully sharing our experience for 
others in Fedora/FLOSS in general.

What do you think?

-- 
“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.” — Dennis M. Ritchie
Jesús Franco - Fedora Ambassador from México and Translator.
http://identi.ca/tzk