Re: Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs

[Leslie S Satenstein <lsatenstein@xxxxxxxxx>]

I would consider LibreOffice. We could have a master document and pre-assign the chapters. With markup and ability to work offline while commuting, it or a similar product would be beneficial for smaller docs or even for collaboration.

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From: Zachary Oglesby <zach@xxxxxxxxxx>;
To: For participants of the Documentation Project <docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
Subject: Re: Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs
Sent: Mon, Nov 18, 2013 3:48:21 PM

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Eric H. Christensen <sparks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I guess so many of us just use the CLI to create our works that we don't think about GUI programs.  I couldn't tell you a single GUI program that would be good for creating/editing DocBook (gedit?) because I just don't use them.  I'd welcome other people's experience with GUI tools so we can start recommending these to people.  Same goes for Git.  It really isn't that difficult to use these tools once you understand what's happening and why.  Like I mentioned earlier, I think training is key here and something we're missing.  Last week I started working on training videos that I'll continue to refine (I'm still sick so my voice isn't great right now).  As soon as they are ready I'll start kicking them out the door and hope to get feedback.

I think the issue is the learning curve. From my experience people want to join the Docs team because they see it as an easy way to contribute back to Fedora. Not everyone has a technical background and teaching people to use the tools of the trade over IRC is not always easy. A good set of tutorials would definitely be helpful, but I don't think we can assume that everyone that wants to help has the technical background to just jump in to emacs/VIM, docbook XML, and git. The training at FUDCon was a great idea, but that obviously will not scale. Mentorship is also good, but can still make someone fell like they are teaching themselves and someone is simply checking in on them. We need a way to teach people to use the tools in a way that is easy to understand and scalable. 

 

There is definite overlap in some of the guides (installation, admin, and security to name a few).  We should probably reduce that overlap and make sure the expectation is to find a certain piece of information in a certain guide.  Getting an internal search engine going is also needed.

There are lots things that need to be done, really.  I suspect that it would be quite a lift to get us back to where we need to be.  That said, I don't think it's out of the question.  Would people be interested in meeting for a FAD to get some stuff done?

I think that is a good idea, we need to prioritize the work that needs done and figure out the best course of action so that content gets into the hands of people who need it. 

- -- Eric

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