[FM Discuss] Beyond manuals

[Anne Gentle]

Good point Mick. I've tried to describe the differences I see in
"user-generated doc" and "community-generated doc" to others and I usually
fall short, but you're hinting at the differences I see/perceive. Much of
the Drupal wiki is user-generated doc. FLOSS Manuals is community-generated
doc with a specific goal and purpose "free documentation for free software."


Even though FLOSS Manuals uses a wiki, it's really a souped-up CMS and
publishing system in one. So when you need a Drupal book for a specific
purpose, and the info wants to be free, FLOSS Manuals can provide a toolset
to write that particular book.

But, we're still playing an old skool publisher role then - only books that
a handful of acquisition people want are then brought into the FM framework.
How do we play in the space between - with lots of acquisition experts plus
lots of editors vetting the content, perhaps in small chunks?

I won't claim to have the answer. :) But I have made one observation about
FM in another context - that FM provides not only a toolset, but often also
provides (or recruits) writers and editors who are exceptionally good at
what they do. We'll be sought after more for the people and community than
the toolset in some cases.

Andy, your thoughts?

Anne


2009/3/23 mick at mcin.net <mick at mcin.net>

>
>
>> I think that, despite the name "FLOSS Manuals," we have to think about
>> smaller contributions and about how to tie them together. I've known this at
>> least since 2004 when I first wrote about online contributions. Here's one
>> of my articles for background:
>
>
> I agree with the need for this but maybe FLOSS manuals isn't the place for
> this.
>
> Take the Drupal manuals that I'm starting now for example and hoping to get
> help with on the mini sprint 17-19th April.
>
> Drupal is a nightmare to document, I think we can all agree on that, that's
> why well written books on it actually sell. However there is also clearly a
> place for on going micro documentation - this is currently on the pages on
> the relevant Drupal groups and modules and forums and blogs.
>
> If we were to try to move that to FLOSS Manuals then the Drupal
> 'manuals' would soon be as messy as the Drupal site.
>
> I'm thinking of the Drupal manual for FLOSS Manuals as a middle ground
> between the two. It's maintained by a smallish number of people guiding the
> contents, in this case the inicial drive would be to represent how to do
> multimedia in a couple of ways using the currently preferred version of
> Drupal version 6.
>
> This would have the same level of clarity as a Drupal book, the same self
> imposed limitations (to create that clarity) - but with the advantage that
> we can update the 'best practice' for how to achieve certain goals as the
> technology improves and shifts (as it seems to do every 6 months in Drupal)
>
> I think this is a different situation with something like the Command Line,
> where there isn't going to be huge divergences in the ways people do things,
> and indeed the subject matter really lends itself to breaking things down in
> the micro sections, but I'm wondering how many situations this can be
> applied to.
>
> I also wonder if we should because of these issues, limit the scope of the
> Drupal manual to something thing like - 'Overview of Multimedia in Drupal '
>
> In general I think we need to be clear about what FLOSS Manuals isn't as
> well as what it is. I think this will help us when we are faced with issues
> of Communities who have their own documentation systems - which I think are
> more normally used to these smaller contributions.
>
> Mick
>
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>
>


-- 
Anne Gentle
email: annegentle at justwriteclick.com
blog: www.justwriteclick.com
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