Allright,
* How do we attract authors? (People who write content)
* How do we attract translators? (People who translate the content from
English into their respective languages)
* How do we decide what to work on? When? For how long?
for myself this questions are difficult to replay, havenīt found until now a clear tendency why people do author or translator work. The willing to help is for sure a concern, but the multitude of informations and themes which are to care for can also slain this willing, my first purpose at this time was to learn more about IPFire but also to support a good project, so i started to translate wiki sections from german to english and tested also a various amount of addons and functions on the basic system of IPFire.
I think also what Rod says is important, new users or mostly people from the forum feels a high obstacle to change things in the wiki cause they think they make something wrong or swipe somebodies work. May some more hints in the wiki that everybody is invited to extend own know how can may change those attitudes, but we have tried also those rudiments with sides like this --> http://wiki.ipfire.org/projects/docs/start and references to this side in the wiki, but also by motivating the people directly in the forum. The result is the reason of this mailinglist theme, so i have not really an answer how we can attract people to work more in this topic.
A possibility to reach more people or to transfer a kind of "wiki politic" were everybody is invited to help out in this working area can be to write a round mail, like with the core updates, everybody who have signed into the forum can be informed in that way. But i donīt know how much attraction comes out of that.
The decision what to work on should be set by a similar priority like in development. If there is a bug in the basic system it is more important than a bug in a addon, surely both will be fixed fast ;-) but i want to point out that the wiki for the basic system is more important to have it complete and well structured i think. Also a good indicator for improvements can be to look at the questions in the forum. Before the "new" Squid wiki there was really a lot of repeating questions, after every single part (function of the WUI) was explained, the questions concerning to the proxy in the forum was reduced dramatically. Also the possibility to give short help informations only by linking to the specific section was a work simplification for supporter in the forum.
The decision "When" to work on topics should be as soon and straight-lined as possible, but to make those decisions, a organized team should be available, this takes me back to the question "How do we attract people".
"For How long?": Depends on the theme and also on the amount of helpers i think.
On your note about that development has to be involved in this as well:
Agreed and I already talked to Arne and Stevee how we can do that in the
least time consuming way, because we also don't have much time and loads
of things to work on.
Writing articles in more than one language is an absolute no-go. We will
leave it at English and write down the most important things one needs
to know about a certain add-on or what ever. Adding screenshots, doing
the translations and getting the article into a round shape should be
the task of the translation team. Could you guys agree on that?
I also think that developers are not the best people to write end-user
documentation. It is getting to complex and not suitable for beginners
any way.
Not only You Arne and Stevee should follow those rules, also addon developers, or development in general. Sorry for the worse link to Wikipedia --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_documentation#Role_of_documentation_in_software_development but i think in there are some good statements why documentation in software development are very important and also a inherent part of development. If it is in german or in english is for now secondary i think. All developed functions needs to be explained in there, otherwise how should a possible documentation team knows what they have to write for. Screenshoots, the layout stuff, the literarily consolidation and translation should be the very own of an documentation team i think, so far i can agree with you. But a good documentation hand out of new development is the basic of a better documentation i think. Time is always a problem for all, since this project is a non commercial one, nobody can live by working in full time in this project, but it shouldnīt be a whitewash for incompleteness.
So an idea can be to have an closer contact from the developer team to a possible documentation team, to ensure this knowledge transfer. This can also be attractive for new helpers to stay a little closer to the matter.
Erik
Am 12.07.2013 um 00:01 schrieb Michael Tremer:
Great thoughts, but let's bring down the pace a little bit before we
start talking about the actual content that needs to be reviewed and
possibly (re-written).
I am still aiming for defining a workflow in this discussion that should
be followed under all circumstance, because I think this is what is most
important on a team, that we are all on the "same page" (almost
literally in this context).
Central questions are:
* How do we attract authors? (People who write content)
* How do we attract translators? (People who translate the content from
English into their respective languages)
* How do we decide what to work on? When? For how long?
The has to be a "team", otherwise we don't need to think about the
content.
On your note about that development has to be involved in this as well:
Agreed and I already talked to Arne and Stevee how we can do that in the
least time consuming way, because we also don't have much time and loads
of things to work on.
Writing articles in more than one language is an absolute no-go. We will
leave it at English and write down the most important things one needs
to know about a certain add-on or what ever. Adding screenshots, doing
the translations and getting the article into a round shape should be
the task of the translation team. Could you guys agree on that?
I also think that developers are not the best people to write end-user
documentation. It is getting to complex and not suitable for beginners
any way.
-Michael
On Thu, 2013-07-11 at 19:30 +0200, Erik K. wrote:
Hi all,
regarding to the ideas causing a better overview of the wiki content, i have tried a more compressed layout of the configuration wiki. The actual (official) look of this section can be found in here --> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/start .
The new one is very unready and only a first try, but it should show an idea how it could be better overviewed.
In here --> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/start you belong to the new structure.
Until now there is no content behind the structure but this should be done fast by a copy and paste of the old content. <-- Better to check out some sections before. Another possibility in this kind of structure can be to work more precised in themes with e.g. 5-10 different sections not as before with 40-50 (example in here --> http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/start ).
A statement to the wiki workflow:
In the last months, mostly work was done in particular articles of the wiki, also to clean up the code cause a lot of plugins was replaced, so the general structure wasnīt touched but becomes more and more informations. I think most important is for the first
* Find out a new structure which can be better overviewed (configuration and installation, ???).
* Go for a checkout of the basic system articles (without addons) and find out the worse sections to make them better and clearer.
* If old articles will be revised, the explained functions should also be tested.
* Documentation should be a part of the development of software (and if it is only a short developer hand out) so a possible documentation "team" have it easier.
Also to overview the actual changes in the wiki needs to be checked. In here --> http://wiki.ipfire.org/start?do=recent a done list can be overviewed. If there was a change in german, it might be great to find it also in the english wiki. As more people looks in there as better it is.
The native speakers: It is very important to have some people especial in english (american/english). The best might be that some people are native in two languages german/english otherwise we have the same condition than before. I tried always my best as an native german speaker to translate the wikis into english, but thats not enough for a good feeling by reading. So i tried always to send some messages over the docu mailinglist with the please that someone can go for corrections (also in german). Sometimes this kind of workflow did it very good (thanks again Rod by the way ;-), but sometimes (especially in the last past months) there was no response. As time goes by the wiki articles leaves the memory that there was something to do and they where forgotten. So it is maybe an idea to mark those articles as "uncheck, everybody is invited to go for a revise" or something.
So for the first some ideas from me.
Greetings
Erik
_______________________________________________
Documentation mailing list
Documentation@lists.ipfire.org
http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation