Re: Nine Months in Six Months

[Don Scorgie <DonScorgie Blueyonder co uk>]

On Fri, 2006-09-08 at 01:00 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Here is my much-anticipated MASTER PLAN:
> 
> Using my incredible mathematical genius, I have figured
> out how to fit an entire nine months of work into only
> six months.  I knew there was a reason I got a degree
> in mathematics.  (Or at least, I could, if I'd just pay
> Purdue that pesky $40 I owe them.)
> 
> http://www.gnome.org/~shaunm/ninebysix.html
<snipping more of shaunm's insane ramblings.  Oops, sorry, I mean Our
Fearless Leaders insightful comments>

There are really two problems faced by the doc team:

Problem the first:
Doc people do not have enough time.  Its as simple as that.  As shaunm
pointed out, this release we got 4 weeks to update the documentation.
This included 3 new modules needing docs, as well as lots of updates to
lots of other docs.  The doc team has been on skeleton staff ever since
I've known it.  Most of the docs are now pretty out of date.  Add in a
desire to have translated docs and basically, the doc team has negative
time to do the required work.  The great part about it is that for the
other 5 months, the doc team is pretty much sitting around, twiddling
thumbs and thinking up plans for world domination [1].  The writers
can't really do their thing with a moving target.

Problem the second:
The doc team is pretty ostracised from the general GNOME developer
community.  We (okay, shaunm) have tried to fix this for as long as I've
been around, but developers prefer to spend their time working on new
pretty or quashing bugs.  Doc people are generally fairly far down the
list of priorities.
(and yes, this is a real problem)

The "9x6" proposal helps address the first problem pretty well.  At no
point in the cycle are the doc people nor the devs sitting around
twiddling thumbs and planning world domination [2].

Addressing the second problem is more ... problematic.  As I said,
shaunm's been trying to fix this for years.  There are plans afoot to
try and fix this, but unless we have more time to write the docs,
getting our profile raised won't really have much impact [3].

So, to summarise: Doc team need more time.  6x9 proposal provides that.
If another proposal were to be ... proposed [4] that granted the doc
team more time than currently, but also solved the issues raised in all
the other posts in this thread, I'd be right behind it.  As of now
though, the 6x9 seems the best option anyone's suggested (including the
current schedule) [5].

Seconds out... Round four...
Don

[1] Want to plot world domination? Join the GNOME doc team today!
[2] Okay, negative impact on world domination front, positive impact on
GNOME.  Most of the plans we thought up were pretty pants anyway and
seemed to involve the use of sheep too much
[3] I can imagine it'd just piss people off tbh.  "Ugh.  Another email
from the doc people.  Why bother responding, its not like {I use the
docs | they do anything with the stuff I send | they've even looked at
the docs for my module in 3 years}"
[4] I'm not at my most eloquent today.
[5] With my doc team hat on, but also my developer hat - 7 months of
hacking in the release cycle!