New member

Sun Aug 24 18:35:18 UTC 2014

Sorry about the delay on this response guys, this week has been the "Lets
get moved into college!" week so: busy busy busy.

I shall look over the 'reading material' above and take it to heart.

I can hop on IRC no problem, the only issue I might have is the meetings
unfortunately. I'm on USA Eastern which puts the meeting at 0900-- right in
the middle of one of my classes. If there's minutes posted afterwards I can
definitely look over the minutes and take note of anything that came up
however.

I'd have no problem working on the F21 release notes, though one page I did
see that could use some love is actually the wiki page for joining a Fedora
SIG (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Join_SIG). There's nothing
majorly wrong with it, just two things I noticed:

1) The artwork on there (no offense meant to Nitesh Narayan Lal) seems to
be using an older version of the Fedora Mascot (Panda? Polar Bear? Teddy
Bear? I never figured out what the mascot was, to be honest), which makes
it look off compared to the artwork on say...
https://fedoraproject.org/en/download-splash

2) Vertically done images that waste content-space, where a horizontal
image set would have fit perfectly.

Now, I'm not claiming to be some great artist or anything like that. But I
can play around with the images in gimp a bit, or if someone can point me
in the direction of the artist that DID the download splash mascot images I
can talk to them and see if they can do updated-versions of the Join_SIG
page.

Now onto Pete's question...

How many SIG leaders sit on the forums? Or at least check in? The ones that
do... If you see someone posting a lot of good content do you reach out to
them and offer them to join the SIG? For the Docs group I would suggest
watching for good tutorials, howto's, troubleshooting steps, etc. Why are
the forums unofficial to begin with? Why is it forums.fedoraforums.org and
not forums.fedoraproject.org? Users will use the forums. Users will LOOK
for forums for help, not mailing lists. Mailing lists are good for
developers-- people who are constantly involved with the project. Forums
are one-shot affairs, they ask a question they get an answer, they don't
come back until they have another problem. OR.. Forums are used by those
trying to target the one-shot users. The ones who are writing tutorials and
howto's, the ones who are looking out for the beginner users. Why are they
on the forums? Because they know their audience. They know the target of
their writings are not on the mailing lists, they are on the forums.

How much of the Fedora design process is done in the open on the forums?
I'm thinking of KDE's recent push with the Visual Design Group. A lot of
work is happening and being talked about on blogs and such, but a lot is
also happening in the Visual Design Group's dedicated forums. They are
engaging users where the users are, and they are getting feedback. Sure,
sometimes this feedback is just "Yay" or "Nay" but sometimes this feedback
is in the form of a counter-proposal. That person, the one who just drew up
a counter-proposal, they just got introduced to and dipped their feet into
Visual Design. Never know, might inspire them to help out and contribute
more often.

The metaphor and relationship I was trying to create isn't perfect between
the Fedora's Doc SIG and KDE's VDG, but I hope I made my point with how
much of a mirror there could be.

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Pete Travis <me at petetravis.com> wrote:

> On 08/21/2014 01:20 PM, Eric Griffith wrote:
> > Greetings all,
> >
> > I have used Fedora for a number of years now (a few of you may have
> > seen me in the forums, or on Phoronix), but I have decided that I wish
> > to finally contribute to the project itself. As I just starting to
> > learn Python, C++, and HTML/CSS/JS, but I am starting school for a
> > Bachelor's Of English, I thought documentation would be the best way
> > to start and get my foot in the door.
> >
> > I am also requesting permission to join the "docs" group on FAS for my
> > user (egriffith), as well as a pointing-in-the-right-direction for
> > where to get started contributing.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --Ericg--
>
> Welcome Eric!  I'm glad you've decided to join us.   Petr has covered
> the reading material and social arrangements, so hopefully we'll hear
> more from you.  Ironically the docs on joining docs sometimes need the
> most attention, so if you find something that doesn't quite add up, ask
> questions or take the initiative and edit.  We can get so focused on
> today's priority that maintenance might need someone to complain :)
>
> That brings another idea to my caffeine-deprived mind.  ( You'll notice
> that we aren't shy about throwing around ideas before they're fully
> formed; the group does a great job of forging idle thoughts into
> productive ideas - or slag... )  You're coming from a part of the Fedora
> community we don't hear a lot from.  It's always bothered me that there
> are so many people investing vast amounts of time and wit into forums
> discussions about Fedora, but we don't hear from them often.  Fedora
> Docs has had a lot of discussions about community outreach, getting
> feedback and input from the 'unofficial' community areas like
> fedoraforum.org, and using the information to incrementally improve our
> offerings or write new things targeting their needs.
>
> Eric, as an established participant there, where do you think we need to
> improve to better address the needs of that section of the user base?
> Are there any pain points that come up regularly that we could address
> with better docs?  Do you have any ideas about how we can establish an
> effective feedback loop?
>
> While we're pondering all that, yes, please do help with the release
> notes!  At this stage in their development, we're doing a lot of
> research and dumping info into the wiki at
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Documentation_beats .  Later the
> info gets converted into docbook and committed into the git repository
> for the RNs, but now, the focus is on content.
>
> Of course, if you had *anything else* in mind to write about, we can
> find a place for that too. There's lots to work on - what would you like
> to do?
>
> --
> -- Pete Travis
>  - Fedora Docs Project Leader
>  - 'randomuser' on freenode
>  - immanetize at fedoraproject.org
>
>
>
> --
> docs mailing list
> docs at lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe:
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/docs
>
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