Hi all Docsters, One of the issues which arose in the last Fedora Project Board meeting was the steady (rising?) number of complaints about how many account system requirements there are for new contributors. We already know that having no single sign-on capability makes the process harder than it needs to be; this is already under discussion, so, since we Docs folks can't solve that problem, let's talk about the problems we *can* solve. * Some new contributors are not familiar with GPG or SSH. * The account system has a number of steps and an interface that is not particularly warm and friendly for newcomers. * The wiki pages speak to the requirements but do not give concrete (and hopefully foolproof) command line steps for making things Just Work. * In many cases they link outbound to other pages for what is supposed to be more information, but which is woefully inadequate. The fact that we have so many people putting content on the wiki is *fantastic*, but for canonical docs like "setting up a Fedora account," we need simple, step-by-step, procedural guides that don't send people on a wild goose chase around the wiki. We have a number of people who have taken time and effort to come to us with offers of help, only to find that juts getting to the point where they can contribute is an enormous time sink! This is just unacceptable IMHO, and I hope that you share this opinion -- especially since we are the folks who should be making this easy. As a Board member, I'm coming to the Docs Project to ask for help in getting content to the new Plone CMS *before* it goes live. The Plone CMS (refer to http://fpserv.fedoraproject.org/ if you have no idea what I'm talking about) will, one day Real Soon Now, supplant or overarch the wiki. We want the launch of the Plone CMS to *lower the barriers* for folks. We want to get Docs support to identify and push this content ASAP. As a member of the Docs Project, I want to get people excited about a chance for us to kickstart the CMS and get some additional project visibility. This idea of "lowering barriers" is nothing new for Docs -- it's something we've discussed often in Docs; something we've tried hard to do with our toolchain, our attitudes, and this very list; and something we can now exemplify in the community. I think it will also energize some of our newcomers and hopefully bring in other fresh faces (and hands). 1. Who wants to take on the Account Setup Guide? Keep in mind you won't have to do an awful lot of writing; it's mostly just collecting written bits from the wiki, expanding them where needed, and making sure everything flows nicely for an absolute newcomer. 2. How can we make our toolchain do the majority of the work for the CMS, like publishing and such? This is a more subtle question that probably needs some batting around, and will require coordination with Websites. Seth Vidal and I will help connect these dots, but folks here are intimate with our toolchain and we should be prepared to come to the table with some answers. 3. It might be a good idea for us to start thinking about what docs content is "faster-evolving" than we can or should keep up with in CVS. Enough of my yakkin'. Whaddaya say? Let's boogie. Input, please, and remember to use long descriptive sentences where possible for those of us who are new at this game! That's speaking not just for newcomers, but for myself as well, a Bear of Very Little Brain. :-) The foregoing is a brain dump from about midnight last night, and I was fading fast, so if you see something scatterbrained, please point it out in the interest of generating more sane discussion. -- Paul W. Frields, RHCE http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
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