Hello Jim,
Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. It will be very useful and
helps us in our effort to improve the way we work at the Ubuntu Manual
Project.
Kevin has already answered most of it, I will add a few of my thoughts.
1. Need for more authors and editors. This is always the case. Ideally
we would like to see that every chapter/section has an author/editor
pair. As it is now, we have not (yet) reached this ideal situation.
Also, there can be situations in which a person who promised he would
contribute, suddenly withdraws for whatever reason. That is a
coordinator's nightmare. We have just welcomed a new contributor, Craig,
but the question is: how do we get more contributors?
2. Schedule: I agree that we should start as soon as possible. Expect a
call for authors soon.
3. Meetings: we should have meetings more often. The planning for
meetings can be included in the schedule.
4. Screenshots. Let's not forget that especially Sylvie and Carsten have
done a tremendous job for Raring. We should try to get the ideal
situation in which authors upload the screenshots for their
chapter/section according to the instructions in the style guide so that
it is not up to a few people who have to do most of the screenshots at
the last moment. Screenshots cannot be taken at an early stage because
we have to wait for the beta release.
I talk about ideal situations. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal
world. But we must try to improve the way we work as much as possible.
Hannie
Op 27-04-13 20:24, Jim Connett schreef:
I, too, wish to add my congrats and thanks to everyone for their hard
work on the release of the Raring manual. It's really wonderful to see
a team so diverse in skills and localities come together to accomplish
a task.
As I am wont to do, I've thought about the positives and negatives of
this iteration of the manual. Each manual presents its own surprises
and its own unique set of "emergencies". Of course, my desire is that
we capitalize on the positives and find ways to learn from the negatives.
_Positives
_
o Good communication between leads and all involved with regards to
due dates and assignments.
o Well-developed and tested "help" documents released to aid in
installation (tex) and version tracking (bazaar)
o A good foundation for the document has been created, allowing us to
reduce our focus on the general information and focus more on the
specific changes introduced with each iteration.
_Negatives
_
x Not nearly enough authors.
x Editing was a challenge this iteration as some authors missed the
deadline.
x Too many changes in what was finally released in 13.04 that kept us
scrambling up to the last second (Gwibber).
x Screenshots seemed to be a bit of an unexpected issue this time around.
_Recommendations
_
! There should be a meeting one week before the due date for authors
(and editors if they wish) to gain an assessment of where authors are
at in the process...reassign sections if needed, etc. I don't think it
works very well to have an authors/editors meeting 1/2 way through the
editing process. I think it's better to have these as separate
connection points.
! More communication is needed when calls-for-authors and
calls-for-editors are made. I remember only seeing one "call" on the
300-or-so RSS feeds I follow. Calls for authors/editors should be done
3-5 times...up to two weeks before the author deadline. In fact, I
would even go so far as to recommend we start getting authors/editors
lined up now for Saucy. It appears the Ubuntu Documentation Project
is hurting (very badly) for authors/editors, and they've already put
the word out for assistance...this means the pool of potential
volunteers may become more limited.
! Shave one week off of the author due date and give 3 weeks for
editing. We have all this time to write, but a very narrow window to
edit/rewrite as needed. If our goal now is to always release the new
manual with the release of the new version of Ubuntu, I believe
editors need just a little more time to do their job.
! Re-instate the screenshot team. Screenshots should be uniform across
the entire manual. Having everyone do their own screenshot...even when
using the default theme, tends to produce ever-so-slightly different
results. I would estimate it would take two people about 4 hours each
at the end of the editing phase to do all the screenshots. (As a
side-note...I do not think screenshots should be in the margin! If the
concept is important enough to have a screenshot, it should be in the
main section of the document.)
So...that's my perspective. take it or leave it. Again, great job
everyone! I'm looking forward to getting started on the next iteration
in a few months!
--Jim
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Mehmet Kani <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,
Thank you all for all the support during the authoring stage. Look
forward to the next project.
Happy days.
Warm regards
Mehmet
--
Mehmet Kani
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
View Mehmet Kani's profile on LinkedIn
<http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mehmetkani>
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