Mentoring would definitely make me feel more comfortable contributing. I'm still a little unclear on the procedure.
Nancy Scanlan, DVM, MSFP Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is optional. -- Jean Hollis Weber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hello all! Several times over the past year, members of this group have asked for mentoring with regard to writing, reviewing, editing, or just understanding the process -- how to contribute to OOo user documentation. I think we've all agreed that a mentoring program (for those who want it) would be a very good thing for us to have, but the problem has always been a lack of people with the time and skills to act as mentors. We now have a lot of new members in the group (both experienced and inexperienced writers), so this is a good time to bring the subject up again and get an idea of how many people want to be mentored and who is available to do the mentoring. Gary Schnabl, a techwriter/editor who has recently taken over as editor of the Writer Guide, mentioned to me that he is available to answer questions or mentor in editing and related topics. That's a good start! Thank you, Gary. We might also talk about the practical aspects of making a mentoring program work, in addition to having enough people involved. Gary suggested that providing practical examples on the mailing list or on a dedicated forum might be a good way to do some group mentoring. Janet and I were doing a bit of this a year or more ago, before we both got too busy to continue. If Gary and others could take this up again, I think it would be great... and I like the idea of using a forum in addition to this list. This mailing list and a forum could coexist, serving different purposes. The list is a means to send everyone every message (good for announcements and keeping people informed of who is doing what). A forum could be used for specialized purposes and its automatic threading is especially useful for instructional purposes and not losing connections between posts when something is added to an older thread. We would like to hear your ideas. Would mentoring help you feel more confident or comfortable about contributing? What do you need? What could you contribute? How can we all improve the way we do things and help each other to produce the best possible user documentation for OOo and keep it up to date? --Jean
