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List:       fedora-docs-list
Subject:    Re: Lowering the participation barrier for Fedora Docs
From:       Chris Murphy <lists () colorremedies ! com>
Date:       2013-11-19 22:15:47
Message-ID: 2922C6BE-E4EF-4B09-ADFF-571B6B137226 () colorremedies ! com
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On Nov 19, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Zachary Oglesby <zach@oglesby.co> wrote:
> 
> Sparks has tried to "reboot" the mentor process but I don't know how well that has \
> worked. I think that the tutorial videos he is working on will help, but ultimately \
> having someone (or multiple people) taking time to looking over their work and help \
> them get started is a powerful motivator to keep going. The key is to keep people \
> interested and show them they are helping. Fedora as a whole has always said that \
> getting people to contribute is important because it provides a sense of ownership \
> and keeps people engaged, its no different for any subgroup.

What sort of automation can apply here? I'm thinking of something that would track a \
contributor's contributions, and general areas of interest. And somehow track the \
aging of content either by chapter or even by subheadings, and if that content hasn't \
been reviewed/edited in a while, a request to review is sent based on some heuristic \
that makes sense:

a. request the original contributor
b. request the most recent editor of the content
c. request the most recent active contributor who has indicated this content is \
interesting d. mark content as possibly obsolete/stale for review at a weekly meeting

Content could have different aging categories. One might be "each release" whereas a \
chunk of content might be "long term" for 2 or 3 releases before it needs to be hit \
up for review.

If any content is edited, then it's aging process starts over. 

Something that aids in knowing what content needs refreshing or at least a review. \
And also helps delegate those tasks. Maybe a role isn't even actually writing or \
editing, but just reviewing content.

And then also I like the idea of content pages having a user rating on them. Good or \
bad is super simplistic but at least would raise a red flag to shift the aging time \
shorter so it gets reviewed by someone. Good means "keep it" and bad means "fix it". \
In either case, it means users have a need for that content, and helps with resource \
allocation.

The people in the team who have been around the most should know where the land mines \
and bodies are buried. They should have the big picture view. So I think they need to \
come up with a priority listing of needs. From that, translate it into retooling, and \
recruitment. Until we're clear on exactly what problems or needs are, we aren't going \
to locate the right tools, processes, or recruits to address those problem and needs.

New users may be ripe source for recruitment on non-Fedora affiliated forums. It gets \
them active and invested in Fedora. They typically have some kinds of confusion about \
installing or using Fedora which is ripe content for writing, so maybe they're even \
familiar with how existing documentation helped or failed to help solve their \
problem.

And even moderators on 3rd party Fedora/linux forums, I'd wonder if they cite Fedora \
documentation and of not, why not. They may have some handle on what sorts of \
questions/problem always come up. That's good source material for documentation which \
should have those questions really clearly asked/answered already, side stepping a \
trip to a forum and waiting for an answer.

Chris Murphy
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