Re: Docs Project: how well are we doing?

Hey, Sorry if this is long or not what was wanted, but hey, if it is just skip over it! I did some work on updating this guide in the build up to Fedora 7's release, but I didn't go further because I felt like the goals of the doc/direction it was going in weren't clear and I didn't know what still needed doing. I asked a couple of times, and thanks to jmbuser for providing some pointers Re: this, but I still felt lost in the end, like the guide was aimless. Maybe I should have pushed further, but some other things came up at the same time and my attention was switched. Hmm, it's difficult to be specific with this question, but I'll do my best. I came along with a huge amount of enthusiasm (mostly as a result of wanting to give something back for all the software I've had for free, wanting to help others out, the usual reasons) and time. I think initially I did some useful work? I hope so! As time wore on though, I found myself with a bit less time than I had before, and felt a little bit confused about where to contribute. Some of the ideas that were tried, with respect to direction, had real promise I think - the timetable, focusing on one guide at a time etc - but none of them really picked up momentum (see my earlier point about the DUG). Another thing that put me off was the very formal style selected by the project. I appreciate that there are good reasons behind this - consistency, clarity, authoritative tone etc - but it's a bit of a chore to write like that: it doesn't feel natural (maybe just me?), and it's dull to read back. One thing that I think the project should consider, as the wider Fedora project has been discussing lately, is "what is our target audience?": while the formal style is great for docs from Red Hat/Microsoft etc (wow never thought I'd write that!) which are aimed at cooperate users, is it right for $fedora_target_audience - is it suitable for, what is currently a small team, to maintain? Perhaps alternative styles of docs could be tried? I've recently been playing with openSUSE a bit (as a result of the target audience discussions) and found that they've got a project to create community contributed "cook books". A Fedora implementation could perhaps see community contributed recipes, through whatever medium (e-mail even!? legal aside), while the small core team could edit and pull things together (polish), and obviously write recipes themselves!? Other things I think are important I've talked about in the past: clear to-do lists of what needs doing so contributors know what to do etc. I hope this is useful to people? I'd love to start contributing again in the future but starting uni next month may take up some of my time, at least while I get settled; maybe in a few months I can become more active again, and hopefully I won't feel so lost then as well :D Also, my apologies about the Revisor guides - I still hope to be of some use with these in the future! Jon p.s. You guys do great work as it is: rel notes/inst guide/tools etc are superb!