Attendees:
-----------
John Babich (jmbuser)
Dimitris Glezos (glezos) <g>
Karsten Wade (quaid) <q>
Paul W. Frields (stickster) <s>
Ricky Zhou (ricky)
Robert 'Bob' Jensen (EvilBob)
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) [dropper-in]
Jesse Keating (f13) [dropper-in]
Summary:
---------
Mainly we discussed participation and motivation in the project. Why we
don't have many active contributors, etc. Discussions and conclusions
include:
* Unrealistic expectations about what contributing means.
<s> "If we're going to raise a barn together, pretty much
everyone needs to commit to hammering, sawing, and hefting ...
People who only want to count timbers and fetch water, you only
need a couple of 'em ;-)"
<g> "... if we don't have the people, then we might need to
rethink if we want to raise a barn or just a plain-ol bench
under an oak tree. :)"
<s> "I can do that on my own. I'd rather raise a barn with a
dozen other people. ... With the wiki, anyone can "build a
bench." Done. ... If there's going to be a FDP, we need to
commit to barn-building."
<g> "... personally, I think our docs infrastructure is already
a shiny building I'm proud of. :)"
* Trying to make it "easy" means too many tools, too many processes
- Fragmenting the how-to aspect
- Making it hard to get one area of FDP complete
<q> "... we're actually quite good with that; a guide can be
worked entirely in the wiki and output at the end with just a
few hours of clean-up ..."
<q> "I don't think Docbook is the problem at all ... I also
don't think it is really the "red tape" ... I think it is that
we are asking people to be real contributors, not
toss-over-the-wallers."
<q> "... anyone ... (can) maintain a doc on the Wiki ... in
fact, that's what the Docs/ space is for ... (but) if you want
it translated ... do we want 2 more l10n systems (Wiki, Plone)"
<g> "... I'd prefer to first worry on how to have up2date
content and *then* for l10n"
<q> "... people don't apply any level of rigor to Wiki work like
they do to other work, IME"
<s> "We had an initial influx of work for wiki-based docs, but
other than the release notes, people have not really done a huge
amount of follow-through on drafts"
<r> "Isn't basic cleanup really easy for bystanders to do on the
wiki?"
<q> "presuming they know how to write and follow a style guide,
yes"
<s> "That's a HUGE presumption too"
<q> "HUGE"
- Plone could help -- easy editing, built in tools for publishing, hooks
for translation:
<g> "do you think plone will increase the number of contributors
to docs?"
<q> "yes, in a few ways ... number of people who can
edit/publish can increase easily ... if people can write with a
Web UI editor and have that go directly into l10n and publishing
without leaving the Web UI, I reckon that will help"
- It would be good to improve our processes, but how to know what and
where?
<g> "... trying to think if we are ... doing something that
could be improved by re-engineering some of our processes."
<s> "You're not offbase... it's just hard to see where the
improvement factors come in when there isn't a sufficient sample
of where our time is spent on current processes, because there
are so few people using them to start with"
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