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List:       fedora-docs-list
Subject:    Re: Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs
From:       Chris Murphy <lists () colorremedies ! com>
Date:       2013-11-18 22:21:12
Message-ID: 2F87687E-53BD-4EB0-A970-330282927025 () colorremedies ! com
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My 2 cents.

I'm a technical writer, and two publishers required I use Microsoft Word. They \
wouldn't accept any other format. So I'm used to subjective technical requirements. \
But then "magic" happened to get that document converted and reformatted even though \
a template was used. The final production was done in some other application.

If there were a way to submit new documents as text, and have them converted and \
edited by a mentor/editor, who is needed anyway to edit and mark up this new content \
to make sure it meets various requirements, this probably would get more people to \
participate rather than having to learn native format tools. At least we get the \
content, assuming the goal is to acquire new content.

If the goal is to update existing documentation, then learning some aspect of native \
tools is inevitably necessary I think. And a step by step guide with maybe some \
screen casts, would be useful to learn all steps needed to successfully edit existing \
documentation.

So what are the goals? There's a lot of very good documentation already, although in \
some cases there's some fairly verbose prose, which must be difficult to translate, \
and more difficult to keep up to date. It's a daunting task to just dive in and start \
chopping up someone else's hard work though, even if that's the right thing to do. \
I'm used to being ruthless when editing other people's work, and unoffended when I \
get back work a majority of which has been marked up for edits. I don't know if \
that's a possible barrier (real or imagined).

Since I'm unfamiliar with the process of editing things, I've just been filing bugs \
citing the problem and suggested fixes, with supporting documentation when necessary.


Chris Murphy
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