I took some time over the weekend to update my workstation to F20. It involved performing a lot of now routine tasks; installing the package set I use, pulling in the git repo I keep for $HOME, updating /etc/fstab to include network shares, adding a couple polkit rules for libvirt, blah blah. I'm sure we all have such a list. These are among many routine, everyday tasks for Fedora users. The kind of task that an experienced user could sit down and perform, and write up a how-to for the action on the fly while they do it. The kind of task that an inexperienced user would ask about on a forum, or on irc, or research with relatively specific search terms. I think of this as 'incidental' or 'case-specific' documentation, rather than generalized documentation as provided in the guides. Our existing documentation base is *great*, and anyone who reads through it all will surely come out with the ability to fill in the gaps and handle case-specific problems. We're teaching techniques and tools, not execution. However, between the broad nature of the guides and the SEO reality of a publican site, I think we are failing to reach many users that are actively looking for tutorial-format content. Publican based guides have one major shortcoming. The barrier to entry for potential contributors is high. I had a chance at Flock to have some candid conversation over beer with a few folks outside of the loyal Docs team, and there was a general consensus that while they might be willing to write some *incidental* documentation - again, my term - contributing to a guide was an ordeal they didn't have time for. We've seen this repeatedly with new contributors as well, people who start out with enthusiasm that fades when there isn't work that they can easily drop into. Contributing to a guide is *not* a casual endeavor; it requires us to not only learn docbook and the subject matter, but to be entirely self-motivated while working on a project owned by someone else. Fitting into the workflow is just as intimidating as learning the tools, if not more. I would like to try something different. We should have a product that leverages the experience and quality of our seasoned contributors and enables new contributors to get started. We should have something that helps inexperienced, impatient users. We should enable the Fedora community at large to participate in our efforts, and I think that means coming to them as much as them coming to us. If we have something easier to contribute to, more contributors will likely follow, and then contributors and content for guides as well. I've set up a quick demonstration[1] of some software that I think will address these concerns, a python application called "Nikola"[2]. I have a package review in progress for it, and have already packaged some dependencies. Briefly, it takes plain text files with ReStructuredText or Markdown and transforms them into fully themed static websites. It hooks in to transifex nicely as well. Take a look, you'll find a post detailing how the implementation might work, and a post for the kind of content I envision putting there. [1] http://appliance.randomuser.org/solutions/ [2] http://www.getnikola.com/ -- -- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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