Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs

Zachary Oglesby zach at oglesby.co
Tue Nov 19 21:39:20 UTC 2013


On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Edith Rivero Tupac <erivero.tupac at gmail.com
> wrote:

>
> Hi everyone:
>
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com>
> wrote:
>
> > - - I'm used to being ruthless when editing other people's work, and
> unoffended when I get back work a majority of which has been marked up for
> edits. I don't know if that's a possible barrier (real or imagined).
>
> I support Chris Murphy's opinnion. Because as a new contributor i find
> important receive answers/feedback even if they ask for rewrite a huge
> amount of work done with the objective of good results in documentation.
>
> Something i really found encouraging was when i received an e-mail from
> Jaromir Hradilek (thank you!) to be a contributor. That made me feel
> confident and responsible to understand tools. Then I have worked in bugs
> (yet, simple ones) and send docummentation to solve them. But it would be
> very rewarding if i received feedback form owners about what i did, even
> this feedback requires lots of corrections. I am working to add some
> content through git, i am not sure if that will help, i hope so.
>
> Regards,
>
> Edith Rivero
>

This is an area that could use some improvement. When I started working on
Docs (that seems like ages ago) the mentoring process was stronger then it
is now. John (jjmcd), Sparks, and Jared (jsmith) did a fantastic job
helping me learn the workflows and processes of the team, but over time I
think that as a whole we have regressed. That is not to say that people are
not doing a good job helping others learn, but as a team we are not as
strong. I am just as guilty as anyone else, I have seen dozens if not
hundreds of people join the group who I have not helped one bit.

Sparks has tried to "reboot" the mentor process but I don't know how well
that has worked. I think that the tutorial videos he is working on will
help, but ultimately having someone (or multiple people) taking time to
looking over their work and help them get started is a powerful motivator
to keep going. The key is to keep people interested and show them they are
helping. Fedora as a whole has always said that getting people to
contribute is important because it provides a sense of ownership and keeps
people engaged, its no different for any subgroup. I think most of us have
had times when life has been busy and we are not around a lot, but the
sense of ownership and responsibility brings us back when we can. (At least
that is the case for me.)
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