On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 20:56 -0400, Marc Paré wrote: > Hi Jean > > Thanks for your answers and all of the other documentation team answers. > This is really a lot of good information. If only there were enough > members to do all that we wanted. Let's hope that with LibO more people > will come on-board for help with the documentation team. I am guessing > the the US and Canadian have not really been tapped and I am also > guessing the Mexico is probably the same. Once we organise and market we > will hopefully get more people on board.
We actually have a lot of volunteers at OOoAuthors, but only 10 or so of them do much of anything. Most of that 10 do excellent work (mainly editing and reviewing, but also some writing) but they are not available as much as is needed. > Could you tell me (I am also a the LibO Marketing Team member) how many > more members you would need at this point, what type of qualifications > they should have? Ideally, how many would the documentation team need? Ideally, for the user guides we need 5 coordinator/ editor/ publishers (I don't really know what to call them) -- 1 for each book -- and I don't know how many doing the writing/ editing/ reviewing/ indexing/ graphics. I would like to see each chapter have someone taking responsibility for keeping it up to date, though obviously one person could take on several chapters, either in one book or a series of related chapters in several books: for example, all the chapters on customizing or all the chapters on printing & PDF creation. That would maximize consistency with the least effort. So... maybe 20 people? (And I'm not considering other types of docs, such as FAQs, tutorials, how-tos, etc.) This page has more info than you want, but one relevant part is the list of things we do when publishing a chapter or a book. There is a lot of post-processing related to where the files are put, wikifying them, etc. Even if much of this can be (semi-)automated, someone has to start the process and verify that it has completed correctly. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Dashboard/Producing_User_Guides I don't care about qualifications as such, but volunteers really need some basic skills that are often lacking but can be highly developed in people with no formal quals. <aside> Most volunteers say they will "proofread" but what we need most is people to do research, write, and critically review/test what others have written. Cleaning up the English when the facts are wrong isn't much help. Much of the work requires good analytical & problem-solving skills or else it's done too superficially and misses too many errors, omissions, and important inconsistencies (such as, does the figure actually show what the text says it shows? If not, which is wrong? Are the instructions complete, correct, and written at an appropriate level for the audience?), not nitpicking over fine points of grammar or word choice. Technical writing/ editing/ indexing/ graphics experience can be valuable but IMO is not necessary. Also, many people with weak skills in English make excellent reviewers/testers and often good writers (though they need to be teamed with an editor) -- because they can do research, organize the material, check facts, etc. </aside> > > Also do you know if the developer docs have a workflow page and could > you point me to this page? I don't know, sorry. Someone who has worked in that area might know. Clayton (the other OOo Docs Co-Lead and an Oracle employee) oversees that area. I do know the developer docs are wiki-based and are edited by a variety of people. I have no idea how much updating is needed. Oh, and there is the Installation Guide, which has sort of been taken over by OOoAuthors so should probably be considered as another "user guide" needing someone to be responsible for it. -- E-mail to [email protected] for instructions on how to unsubscribe List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/documentation/ All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
