I also agree, Ilya put it just the right way, its a +1 from me too.
Ryan Macnish
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 22:29:35 +1300
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ubuntu-manual] Writing freeze: Congrats, and next steps
This sounds great, exactly what we should be doing. Definitely a +1 from me.
Thanks for taking the time to describe it in detail Ilya, this will be very
useful as a basis to start discussion about the future!
Cheers,
Benjamin
On 1/04/2010 8:24 PM, "Ilya Haykinson" <[email protected]> wrote:
All,
Now that we've hit the writing freeze, we need to consider what the next steps
are for the English language edition.
Clearly, we've accomplished a great deal with the first edition. In a few
months we've gone from almost no content to having a complete manual of 170
pages. I think this is quite an accomplishment for the team, and I would like
to thank and congratulate everyone who's contributed with writing, editing,
technical help, programming, artwork, testing, editing, research, outreach etc.
I think we also owe it to our translation teams, who've been making progress
even as the manual has been undergoing great changes -- and who have a lot of
work in front of them still.
Our manual is of course not perfect, but that was never the goal for the first
edition. If I had to look in retrospect at our mission for this first edition,
it would be "Get Something Out". Yes, we want completeness; yes, we want high
quality. But above everything, we needed to get a decent product _released_,
and I think that this is the overriding theme of the last several months of
work.
I propose that at this point, we start following on three different tracks.
The first track is about finishing the First Edition. There is still work in
getting it translated (indeed, now is the translators' time to shine),
released, promoted, etc -- not to mention any final fixes.
The second track should be releasing a Second Edition for Ubuntu 10.04. If the
first edition's goal was "get something out", I think that the second edition
could have a mission statement of "Raise the Quality Bar". We know that our
manual is not completely perfect -- there are lots of (important) omissions;
there are probably bugs; there are inconsistencies in style, grammar, voice,
etc. For Second Edition, we would work to fix all of these. We would also not
step with just reviewing the work ourselves, but engage outside resources to
help us: we can put an emphasis on testing, and on processing feedback from the
initial release. I would imagine that we could probably set a goal of an early
June release, and deliver a consistently-written, thoroughly-tested edition for
10.04. Our goal would not be to add much additional content, but rather to make
the current content consistently great.
The third track should be preparing for a First Edition for Ubuntu 10.10. While
the release cycle for the OS itself will probably kick into high gear soon
after Lucid's release, the following version will not really take shape for a
few months after April 29th. After our own 10.04 Second Edition is finalized,
we can start focusing on things that _we_ want to accomplish for 10.10. I think
that the mission for that edition could be "Improve breadth of coverage". There
are some parts that we are missing -- troubleshooting wireless connections or
audio issues, OpenOffice, minor utilities, additional command line commands,
additional hardware. This will be the time to dive into portions of Ubuntu that
the 10.04 versions did not cover, and make the manual a more comprehensive
guide for new users.
In general, I would love for us to take the "get it out" approach of the
current edition and try to transform it into a "make it great" approach for the
second edition, and then further convert it into a "cover more" approach. If we
can accomplish all three goals over time, I think that we will ensure that our
team can ship high quality products, repeatedly.
I'd love to hear comments from everyone on this approach. Please don't hesitate
to reply to the list.
-ilya haykinson
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual
Post to : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual
More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
_________________________________________________________________
Get the latest jobs delivered. Sign up for SEEK Jobmail.
http://clk.atdmt.com/NMN/go/157639755/direct/01/_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual
Post to : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual
More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
