Regina Henschel wrote: > Hi Keith, > > Keith N. McKenna schrieb: >> It has become painfully obvious over the last 6 months or more that I am >> not the person to push this effort forward. I am tired of answering >> queries about how to help and then never having people come back to the >> list. I will continue to work on the introductory material as I have >> time, but I no longer have the energy to continue to try and drive it >> forward. > > You are frustrated. But you can be sure, it is not your fault. The > situation had been the same in times of OOo. A very large number of > subscribers of the list, but only about 1% active writers. And some of > them are now working for LibreOffice. > You are right Regina I am very frustrated. Thank you for the part about it not being my fault. Sad but true it is the same in any large group; 20% of the people do 80% of the work. >> >> What we need is people with experience in technical writing to drive >> this and to mentor new comers. > > I have attended a meeting of the German LO community last weekend, with > very similar topic. There was the idea of "mentors" too. On the meeting > there were consensus, that pointing a newcomer to some sites to read is > bad. The idea on the meeting has been, to have a set of starting tasks. > The mentor explores the skills of the newcomer. Then he suggest three > tasks to the newcomer, who chooses one. After some time the mentor > contacts the newcomer and ask about the progress. > I think that use of the Orientation Pages as a first point of contact is not a bad thing. It gives people a point of reference to see the very wide range of skills that can be used as part of the documentation team. That said those pages alone cannot be all there is; there has to be people who are willing to actively work with newcomers and guide them through the process.
> Such mentor does not need to have writing skills or be an expert in an > area himself, but he need to be a personal contact for novices. > > The current situation of working on documentation needs improvement. I > see e.g. the problem, that the process is currently not visible to the > community, and writers get no merit. > You are being charitable. Realistically there is no process today. The basic idea was to write relatively short structured and linked pieces that would build from general information applicable to all parts of the software to more detailed but still heavily linked sections for each component of the suite, using on status page to track the progress. I believe that there is the ability to get merit as part of the documentation process. This is the major area that I have worked in and my invitation to become a committer most likely came from that. > I will continue to monitor the list and >> set up accounts on the mwiki as needed. > > It is good, that you will continue doing the administrative part. > I believe that documentation is a vital part of any software project. There needs to be people that can do those administrative tasks since in today's world self registration for things like the mwiki are just not possible. > I think I may take a closer look >> at trying to learn the process of writing the help files as I am seeing >> more bugs posted concerning problems with them. > > I have already written some help texts, so I might be able to help in > technical problems if needed. > I appreciate the offer. Is there any documentation of the process beside the original PDF from Sun? That is pretty old in that it describes the need for OOo 1.5 minimum and describes the use of the old cvs system. Any pointers on the best way to set up an environment to do the work would be appreciated. Regards Keith > Kind regards > Regina --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: doc-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: doc-h...@openoffice.apache.org
