On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 3:12 AM, Sarah Julia Kriesch <ada.lovelace@gmx.de> wrote:
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2016 um 17:33 Uhr Von: "PatrickD Garvey" <patrickdgarveyt@gmail.com> An: "Ancor Gonzalez Sosa" <ancor@suse.de> Cc: "_openSUSE Wiki Mailing List - opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org" <opensuse-wiki@opensuse.org> Betreff: Re: [opensuse-wiki] Why is this acceptable?
OK, I thought that would be the basic direction of an answer, but the openSUSE wiki article claims icecream is a SUSE LLC employee created program. Doesn't it lose that identity when it is hosted on GitHub.com? Shouldn't it be hosted on GitLab.SUSE.de? That is, to become an official SUSE product, it could be developed on GitHub if an individual so chose, but it would not be official until that individual issued a pull request and it was accepted. It isn't important, whether github or gitlab will be used. Both platforms are using the same technology "git". Github is public and everybody can contribute. SUSE is an open source company and has moved most parts of software development from private infrastructure to github in the last years. Do you want to be able to work in the different projects (in documentation) or do you want to work only in the wiki without any knowledge about the special technology behind that all? I would prefer the first one.
And, then there is the challenge of learning a new syntax to do an existing task. This makes the third syntax I've seen used in writing *SUSE documentation. Doc.openSUSE.org requires one to know how to use a proprietary variant of Docbook. En.openSUSE.org requires knowledge of WikiMediA syntax. And icecream is written in Markdown.
That's the reason, why we have got different mailing lists and teams. You will use different technologies in different teams. I can add Weblate to your list (translation team). You can choose what you want to do and with what/ where you want to work with. I hadn't any knowledge about git in my first years at openSUSE, too. I contributed to teams where I knew the used technologies and it was easy to start there. Any time you will have a time stamp, where you want to know/ learn more and you will use other technologies, too. ;)
And let's not leave out the desire to make this documentation available to an international audience. I'm not a translator, so I'm not that familiar with how many syntactical structures are required across the documentation variants, but I've seen emotional discussions when someone proposes a change in the translation workflow. You will need improvements in workflows in communities like in companies. Tell us your ideas and we can use it, if it can make all better. You don't need to be a translator. You can improve/ update the documentation in the English wiki, too. That's one syntax. git isn't a big difference. After some time in our wiki you will understand similarities and use the other platform like naturally.
All these "solutions" break the *SUSE community into smaller and smaller cooperative groups and increase the cost of producing a quality offering. That's the frustration generator for me.
Respectfully, PatrickD -- We have got different groups for getting the quality and you can choose where you want to contribute. You don't need mixing it all! Being in one group is enough for the fist time. After that you can grow into other areas, too.
Best regards, Sarah
Sarah, To put my response to your reply succinctly, you're not seeing the world through my eyes. As I understand it, your perception of the variety of tools used to accomplish the tasks required to support the openSUSE project and the SUSE product is an opportunity to learn many things. My perception is each learning opportunity is a use of time that is needed to produce the components of the project/product that is non-productive if one has already learned a tool and it's syntax that does the job. Learning a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ... documentation tool is non-productive when my objective is to provide high quality documentation. The fact there are three different syntax's that are used by three different documentation producing sub-communities also increases the effort required to coordinate the work of those sub-communities such that the same documentation is produced only once, not three times. The fact there is a link in the openSUSE wiki to a GitHub file indicates it takes an unnecessary expenditure of time for a new member of the openSUSE project just to locate the documentation, let alone keep it up to date. Producing software products is still a very labor-intensive process. Diverting available time to repeated re-learning of a mastered skill is a serious cost to the quality, as well as the quantity, of the output. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+owner@opensuse.org