Rob Weir wrote:
On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Keith N. McKenna
<keith.mcke...@comcast.net> wrote:
After 3 months of frustration it is time to end the effort to get The
Getting Started Guide that had been started for AOO 3.4 completed. Despite
repeated requests for help on the ODFAuthors list it is apparent that either
the Authors that had been working on Open Office docs are either no longer
interested or are working strictly on the LO books.
Alexandro Colorado made an attempt at getting the Base Guide done but was
not able to get any responses to his requests for comments on his markups
and changes and decided to put it on hold until he did. As far as I know he
is still waiting.
One other volunteer stepped up from an inquiry on this list and gave
valuable help. Prabha again thank you very much for your work and I hope
that you will get involved with the defining of a new documentation project.
With only 2 people actively working it is not possible to give the work the
quality review and editing that it deserves to have the Open Office name
attached to it.
Reluctantly unless someone with the requisite skills in technical writing
and publishing that I do not have can lend a hand I feel it is best to end
the effort and not waste anymore of anyone's time.
I will continue to contribute where I can, but that is difficult or someone
who is not a developer.
Let me describe a possible future, and maybe you (and others) can help
influence it. I'm not a documentation expert but I can help some.
But mostly I can help on the recruitment side.
Imagine we do the following:
1) Create a new d...@openoffice.apache.org list
2) We write an "Introduction to Documentation" page for our
orientation modules:
http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/orientation/index.html. It
would be a single page, a high level overview of how documentation
fits into the overall project, what tools and methods we use (or have
available to us), etc.
3) We write a blog post for the project blog, where we issue a "call
for documentation volunteers"
4) We promote that blog post via social networks, and via a prominent
banner on the www.openoffice.org webpage.
5) If we do the above, I think that within 2 weeks we will have 20
people posting to to our new Doc mailing list, offering to help with
the documentation. We've seen similar results with Marketing and QA.
They will have different skill levels, degrees of enthusiasm and time
to contribute. This will be the critical time for the doc project.
We would need several experienced members of the project, on the doc
list, able to answer questions and help the new volunteers. If we
look too chaotic at this point we will lose many of the 20.
I can help drive steps 1-4, but I cannot do 5 by myself. I'd need the
commitment of 3-4 other project members to help mentor the new
volunteers, to volunteer as list moderators, and to help encourage the
relaunched documentation project to develop a documentation plan for
AOO 4.0.
Does anyone want to help with this?
-Rob
Rob;
I would be very interested in helping in any way that I can. I firmly
believe that good documentation is a must for any user centric software
product.
Although I try whenever possible to read the lists via gmane's nntp feed
I would be willing to help with moderating the list.
Regards
Keith
