[FM Discuss] Notes on open source documentation from Open Source convention

[Janet Swisher]

I'm also in favor of accepting anyone who volunteers, and relying on
reviews to ensure quality. People whose work is truly bad might be a
burden to the group, but those people are unlikely to volunteer in the
first place, because they probably don't enjoy the work.

If the experience of working on the project can help the volunteer
improve their skills, then everybody wins. Some projects make feedback
to the writer an explicit part of the review process. When this
subject came up at Writing Open Source, Emma Jane talked about the
writer mentoring program that LDP had for a while, which worked well
until it fell victim to politics. Feedback doesn't have to be that
formal --- even just an editor telling a writer "I made these changes
to your chapter, and here's why" can help a writer who wants to learn.
FM doesn't have that kind of feedback built in, although individual
writers and editors can certainly choose to do it.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 8:26 AM, adam hyde<adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> hey,
>
> cool write up of the presentation Addison gave. I am going to re-read it
> but I enjoy the points about volunteers. Its a very interesting issue. I
> had a discussion recently during the Open Translation Tools Book Sprint
> about how to get people to volunteer to translate. The general agreement
> of those involved (except me) was that you should filter people
> in...that is, place a burden of proof on the volunteers - they need to
> show they can do a good job before you let them in. Hence there was a
> lot of talk of required skill sets, qualifications etc
>
> I was very much in disagreement with this. Everyone wants good
> translation, just as much as everyone wants good docs. But the threshold
> for participation should be as minimal as possible. Good quality comes
> from harnessing the energy of those involved, not by discouraging people
> from being involved...
>
> It seems Addison is thinking along the same lines.
>
> adam
>
>
>
> On Fri, 2009-07-24 at 09:31 -0400, Andy Oram wrote:
>> These get into too much detail to be worth a blog, but I want you all to have a chance to look at them. Because they were public events, I'm sure Emma Jane and Addison wouldn't mind my posting them.
>>
>> Andy
>>

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