Ian Laurenson wrote:
To me the issue is about the OOoAuthor leads wanting to be independent of the rest of the OOo community. To me it appears that the decision to print and sell the work of the community is to fund their independent endeavours and that having a separate mail list is the next step in this independence.
You keep talking about the "OOoAuthor leads". There is nothing whatsoever to prevent any or all of the members of OOoAuthors working on the wiki, or with the Documentation Project, or any other part of the OOo community, and indeed many people active here are also active in other parts of the community.
Many people have joined OOoAuthors because they find it easier to work collaboratively here on particular types of documents.
The members of OOoAuthors own their collective work; we "leads" don't. The members of OOoAuthors will decide how to use the money raised through book sales; we "leads" won't.
I am strongly opposed to moving this list.
Noted.
My recommendation is that OOoAuthors people work to improve the official OOo wiki, including the uploading of files, so that the development of OOo documentation is done on an OOo server. To me the fragmentation of the OOo community by OOoAuthors can no longer be justified on the grounds of lack of interactivity of the OOo site. The confusion that this fragmentation has and is causing should stop. To me if the OOoAuthors are genuinely interested in the well being of the OpenOffice.org community then they would be seeking to improve the integration of OOoAuthors with the rest of the OOo community not further the separation and thus increase the amount of confusion.
I think OOoAuthors is well integrated now with OOo. What we are doing now, and the way we are doing it, works well. We develop information, and that information goes to the Docs website. Anyone can access our draft chapters on our website.
Whether using the OOo wiki would work better for what we are doing, I don't know. No one has yet explained to me how the wiki is supposed to work for the development of user documentation, and I have not had the time to seek out this information on my own. My time online has been severely limited this past month, and will continue that way for some time to come.
If other people at OOoAuthors want to work on the official OOo wiki, that's great. I certainly wouldn't argue against anyone doing so, and couldn't prevent them from doing do even if I were opposed (which I'm not). And if the wiki works better for some people, I'm all for it.
You talk of fragmentation, but my view is that having several different ways of working, ways that suit different people's preferences, leads to a stronger, more active community, where people can contribute in ways they feel comfortable with.
Regards, Jean
