Re: quo vadis, docs

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 11:44 +0100, Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > - Is there anything that can be done, short of transmutating hackers
> > into technical writers at next guadec with the help of poisoned beer ?
> 
> How about a technical writing workshop, led by Don Scorgie and other
> members of the GNOME docs team?

What would you want such a workshop to accomplish?  Is the goal
to teach hackers how to be writers?  I'd be happy to share what
I know about writing software documentation, but bear in mind
that a single workshop isn't going to turn any random hacker
into a great writer.

We do get volunteers on a semi-regular basis, but we inevitably
lose them.  It would be useful to identify why we lose them and
fix those problems.  I'll readily admit that I'm partially at
fault for not taking enough time to train them.  But there are
a lot of hoops you have to jump through to start working on our
documentation, and most people just don't care that much.

> Plus, a prioritisation of documents for pre-release updates.

The whole idea of Pulse was always to show what documentation
needs the most love, which I think is about the closest we can
come to a prioritization system.

--
Shaun