[D-community-discuss] current status / plan update

[Andrei Popescu]

Crossposting to debian-doc mailing list.

Hello everybody,

I am one of the people who wanted to start the novice-doc project.

On Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:07:44 +0000
Chris Lale <chrislale at untrammelled.co.uk> wrote:

> The slides give a good rationale for Debian-community ie
>  * contribute something to Debian without having to be a Debian
> Developer

I found out (the hard way) that it is more difficult to contribute then
I thought. 

>  * international - multi-language.

Good idea, but first we need to have enough content to translate :)

> Some ideas about how Debian users can contribute:
>  * polish Stable
>  * improve documentation

yep

>  * produce video tutorials
> 
> You can add ideas from previous posts:
>  * help aimed at newbies - perhaps a list or a forum

Hhhm, I think this is covered pretty well by the debian-user mailing
list and forum.debian.net. We shouldn't spread the community.

>  * documentation aimed at newbies

This is where I and a few others would like to contribute.

>  * a searchable knowledge base in the form of a directory
>  * a Debian starter pack (Live-CD/install disc(s)) and instructions
> 
> I think the priority must be to firm up this list of ideas and then
> see what might be the best vehicle to deliver them. For example:
>  * D-community as a single, integrated project?
>  * D-community as an umbrella organisation with different, but
> linked, subprojects?
>  * Does it need CVS/SVN?
>  * Does it need a wiki?

I think a wiki is needed at least for the documentation and knowledge
base part. This makes contributing much easier. I like the way
newbiedoc works, where you can contribute even without signing up. This
makes it much easier to keep the docs up-to-date.

>  * Does it need a CMS?
>  * Does it need a forum?
>  * Does it need mailing lists?

IMO forums/mailing lists should be (mostly) for internal use only,
because we already have good support forums/mailing lists and it is
unlikely/undesirable to split the community.

> > Roughly I came to the conclusion, that debian-community.org should
> > have a NM (new member) process :-) (But, it should not take as long
> > as in Debian, rather the opposite, maybe it can show, that NM
> > doesnt have to be long and bureucratic..)
> >
> > The steps could be:
> >
> > 0. Use Debian
> > 1. Signup for debian-community.org, that is, create your own wiki
> > page, where you track your contributions 
> >   
> 
> I am not sure that individual wiki pages are the best way to do this. 
> You probably need to maintain this information centrally.

I would rather have it automagically. Don't need/want another page to
maintain.

> > 2. If you have contributed, you can get on planet.CC.d-c.org
> >   
> 
> I don't really understand what you mean by "planet".
> 
> > 3. If you have contributed more, you can get an email address.
> >   
> 
> I don't quite see the advantage of this. You really need an existing 
> email address when joining in order to authenticate. A new email
> address would have to be set up with email forwarding to the existing
> email address. I suppose that it would be useful for communiction
> direct from the website. Perhaps for someone who did not want to
> publish their existing address because of email harvesting.

I already have 4 email addresses. Maybe only for forwarding purposes. 

From my point of view, I would like to help improve/write new
documentation for Debian, aimed specifically at new (to
computers/linux/debian) users.

Also, after giving it a lot of thought I think we should try not to
split efforts. NewbieDoc is a good initiative, but AFAIU didn't get too
far because of lack of contributors. And the hosting is also not
top-notch. Debian-community has the chance to unify non-developer
efforts, which I think is a Good Thing.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)