Re: our stuff on the wiki

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2006-11-02 at 10:06 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> 
> Our section of the wiki is a mess.
> 
> In particular, there's at least two pages that list
> current tasks, and a roadmap I started too.
> I want to clean this up, as I think we need a task
> list that sits above bugzilla -- for example, for the
> request we've had from the games module team.
> 
> If I have time, I'd like to clean up our maze of 'join
> the team' pages, which alternate between too vague and
> too technical. 
> It seems to me that a lot of contributions to the docs
> have been made by casual contributors, who want to fix
> just one particular thing. (In and out fast, like
> documentation ninjas.)
> We need to help people do that, rather than subjet
> them to heaps of 'read this before you join' stuff.
> (Yes, a lot of that is my doing I admit.)
> 
> As appears to be the convention round here, indicate
> agreement by complete silence </homer>

Um, I guess I'll say nothing then.  Crap, I just said
something, didn't I?

We should definitely try to lower the barrier to entry
for in-and-out fixes.  Wikipedia has shown us that this
can substantially improve the quality of material.

But it won't get new material written as well, or get
massive information restructuring done.  So we should
try to encourage (but not force) occasional editors to
become more long-term documentation contributors.

Here's an imaginary exchange I'd like to see:

Newbie: Hey, I'd like to fix a couple of problems.

Us: Absolutely.  You can do it with a few easy steps.

Newbie: Wow, that was fun.  What else can I do?

Us: Try this slightly harder task.

Newbie: OK, I'm hooked.  Give me more.

Us: Now you read our manuals!


Remember kids, the first hit should always be free.

--
Shaun