Hi, my name is Frank, I am the project manager for documentation in SUSE. The whole doc team was on an offsite last week, so nobody from the team had a chance to respond so far. This has become a long thread, so I hope you bear with me when I answer/ comment in a single mail rather than replying to several posts individually... . ----------------- On Tuesday, 12 March 2019 11:44:39 CET Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:
I usually read complaints about the bad state of openSUSE documentation.
Ancor, this is a rather vague and general statement, can you please provide more details? Questions that immediately come to my mind are: * Does this refer to the openSUSE manuals at http://doc.opensuse.org/ or to the openSUSE Wiki at http://en.opensuse.org/? Both? * Where have you read these complaints and have they been passed on to the Doc team or the Wiki team? If so, what happened to the feedback?
Maybe we can use Season of Docs (the Google's equivalent to Summer of Code) to fix some stuff.
Maybe we should first find out what needs fixing, where is this needed and how to integrate existing resources... . ---------------- On Thursday, 14 March 2019 00:35:19 CET Lana Brindley wrote:
that even the docs mailing list got shut down a little while ago
We decided to shut it down because there was no traffic at all on this list for one year... . If needed/wanted, we can set it up again on short notice. Just let me know... On Thursday, 14 March 2019 03:35:25 CET Lana Brindley wrote:
Since there's no mailing list or IRC any more
That is not true - #opensuse-doc on Freenode exists since many years and the SUSE doc team is present. On Saturday, 16 March 2019 04:32:41 CET Lana Brindley wrote:
Yeah, I'm very familiar with Docbook XML (less so daps), but it is very much a tech writer's toolchain. In my experience with upstream communities, switching to a markdown language can greatly improve contributions from non-tech writers.
I know from personal experience that many discussions in the community (regardless of the topic) end in tools discussions. Before we open that can of worms, I suggest to concentrate on content, collaboration and processes first ;-D. ---------------- On Thursday, 14 March 2019 09:02:22 CET Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:
We had many questions on our wiki mailing list in the past how to contribute to the real documentation of openSUSE, because this documentation is only editable by the SUSE documentation team.
This is no longer true since more than 3½ years (June 2015). Since then, _all_ SUSE product documentation is publically hosted on GitHub and licensed under an openSource license (GFDL, Apache 2.0, Creative Commons). The SUSE doc team happily accepts pull requests, bug reports and other help. The openSUSE documentation that is hosted on http://doc.opensuse.org/, for example, is hosted at https://github.com/SUSE/doc-sle (SLES, SLED, and openSUSE documenation are generated from the same source). Again, we are open for cooperation and collaboration. We have NO intention at all to exclude the community. BTW: The complete doc toolchain the doc team is using is also hosted on GitHub and is used by people from outside SUSE. The _complete_ work the SUSE doc team does is public and transparent for everyone. On Thursday, 14 March 2019 10:33:46 CET Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:
We know about the friendliness. 2 years ago we should receive 1 guy for the integration of openSUSE Contributions and a better cooperation between the SUSE Documentation Team and our wiki team. [...] We didn't watch any Contributions in the wiki by the special SUSE Documentation Team Member. We tried the integration, but that was not possible.
I was involved in these conversations and supported the solution you mentioned above. In hindsight, it would have been better to not make this promise. Not because we did not want to help. Quite the opposite. We made this promise because we really _wanted_ to help. Back then the doc team was under heavy work load (and it still is). We had hoped to find time to squeeze in the work for the wiki (because we wanted to). It turned out that it did not work out. And still does not. I should have let you know about this much earlier. I failed to do so and you have every right to be angry about us not fulfilling our part of the agreement. But be rest assured that it was not done because of disrespect for the community, but because of lack of resources. ---------------- On Thursday, 14 March 2019 10:06:57 CET Simon Lees wrote:
But still it is technically possible to create a pull request.
Yes! And bug reports, if you prefer that.
But really it would be best to discuss the best way forward with the documentation team, they maybe willing and happy to accept pull requests as is they may also be completely unprepared and not have the man power to review a significant number of pull requests.
Reviewing pull requests is part of our daily work and should be doable (unless you do not attempt to rewrite everything with several hundered requests ;-D). We may not always react within hours, but no work will be lost or ignored. the same is true for bug reports - they will usually take longer to get fixed, but we will not ignore them.
Maybe it makes sense to do the work in some other "New openSUSE feature branch",
Our tool chain and DocBook XML make it possible to create parts of the documentation that is only valid for one product flavor (openSUSE in this case). This is true for single words, sections, chapters or even whole guides. Therefore adding openSUSE-specific content should not be a problem.
at worst its possible to fork the documentation into openSUSE's github
I hope it will not come to this - all parties would lose in this case.
There might be other ways as well, but the best people to work that through with is SUSE's documentation team.
That would really be appreciated. And I am volunteering to continue this discussion with you - just let me know where (in case it is moved somewhere else). -- Regards Frank Frank Sundermeyer, Project Manager Documentation SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/ SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org