Hi Hazel, Jean, guys, On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Hazel Russman <[email protected]> wrote: > Reviewing and proofreading are two very different activities. A > reviewer needs to be knowledgeable about the software being described, > so that he/she can check the accuracy of every statement made about it. > A proofreader is looking for quite different things: errors, > infelicities of style, bad cross-references, figures that don't show > what they're supposed to, etc. Logically this should be the last stage > before publication, when the reviewers have done all they want to. But > your work flow scheme doesn't allow for this.
I understand what you mean. In a formal organization (a software company or whatever), the workflow you're talking about would be very important. But, in the LibreOffice docs team, the actual reality is that we currently have a small number active contributors whose work contributions frequently overlap between those formal roles. Also, the types of role that those contributors assume also change fluidly. A given person is often doing both the reviewing and proofreading at the same time. The editor and publisher is frequently doing those jobs, too. And the editor/publisher roles sometimes have to be taken on by someone else if a team member or the team leader becomes temporarily unavailable. We *really* have a fuzzy, fluid organization. Also, the team has people with different degrees of technical proficiency in docs development and publishing and of technical familiarity with the IT tools being used. And there's a permanent goal of lowering the knowledge entry barrier for newcomers as much as possible, and of encouraging new people to get involved. Some newcomers become long-term contributors, others contribute for a short while - or even only for a particular guide. But we want to preserve high quality in the content produced. I think I'd recommend maximal simplicity. That will facilitate learning to contribute, learning to administer/maintain, the writing of documentation for all that, and the actual implementation work itself. It would be possible to configure a very strict and controlling workflow in Alfresco, with specific permissions for each work role and each folder, and quite a bit of automation (automated movement of docs from one folder to another, automated alerts via email, automated task attribution to specific user groups, etc.). Or else things could be left quite fuzzy, with everyone having almost identical powers, and things being done much more manually (basically the current situation). However, IMHO, it would be good to start using Alfresco's blogging facilities, maybe it's wiki functionality, and it's automated email alerts and RSS feeds. You could also consider Twitter as a good channel for updates, both automated and manual. Using Twitter would do away with the need to sign-up for and follow a mailing list, and put you closer to potential contributors from the huge Twitter membership. Most of all, I'd definitely recommend revising the file naming conventions and taking advantage of Alfresco's built-in versioning. And I'd definitely recommend coming-up with a clearly-defined set of meta data fields to be maintained in each file. If we arrive at a clear and comprehensible specification, I could possibly see with the Alfresco project whether they might handle the implementation. Anyway, this is all thinking for your consideration. -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
