[FM Discuss] slashdotted (what's it all about Janet, Adam?)

David davidrex at cableone.net
Sat Feb 18 07:36:05 PST 2012


Hi Janet: If i understand what you are saying I am totally with your thought about the discuss list. I have been "lurking" on this list since 2009, but after the first efforts at editing, I got lost in all the process/editor revisions, technical information, booki, etc. It seems that most of the postings to this list concern technical solutions, problems, the processes of creating FLOSS documents, copywrite issues, circumventing censorship (very important to some i'm sure), html (I could care less and have never had a desire to learn it) and translations (very important).  Perhaps it is the belief of an aging mind, but none of the concepts seem very clear on just what this discussion list is accomplishing. 

I am retired, but you are an active professional Tech Writer;  I understand your interest in actually producing manuals that somebody will read and put to use (perhaps i should say documentation rather than manual -- though i still consider an online troubleshooting guide a catch-22:) . When I was working I always used a "what you see and what you do" approach, and figured if i could describe a product so i understood it several weeks later, anyone else reading it could:) :). I cringed when some engineer/programmer said "everybody knows that".  

I got into this with my purchasing of two OLPC units in 2008. BTW the OS of OLPC computers has come a long way since then. I'm not sure anymore which FLOSS documents are current or what they have to do with OLPC. Many adults with Computer Science degrees appear to have trouble figuring out some of the "activities" (a fundamental error IMHO renaming "applications" which is the universal real-world term). But they seem to be in widespread use throughout the world. Hopefully they aren't gathering dust. When i use one of my units I generally go to the Gnome desktop now available. 

I currently get duplicate E-mails of most posts to two different Mail accounts that i have (davidrex at cableone.net and davidrex at northlink.com -- this was my former ISP but too slow, but i keep a nominal ($5.00 a month) account so i can get E-mails on the road from a familiar source). I have on occasion considered unsubscribing, at least to one of my email address, but don't find any clear-cut way of doing so. I notice that another person on the list actually did unsubscribe (forgive my lack of specifics, short term memory is very short), another like myself, could not see the way.  

I have discussion list E-mails back to Sept. 11, 2009 "Welcome to the "discuss" Mailing List" when i joined.  There was also supposed to be a master blog somewhere, but it was always a blank.

Yes, I use an Apple-- never could get interested in Windows. 

Finally, I hope this does not offend anyone, and I will continue to lurk. E-mails just go into a Floss mailbox which i check when new things come in, and lately there have been a lot.  

On Feb 16, 2012, at 23:11:37, Janet Swisher wrote:

> The comments provide a good illustration of how we need to sharpen our
> message to get through to people. Most of the chatter is about
> authoring tools and formats, publishing formats, and Apple. Only a
> tiny number of posters seem to have gotten the key idea of Booktype,
> which is that it is a *collaborative* book-authoring *platform* (not a
> format or an ebook store) -- but I think the person who mentioned
> slash fanfic is one of them. Most people simply don't have the concept
> that books could be written collaboratively.
> 
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 11:30 AM, adam <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
>> http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/02/16/141235/booktype-an-open-source-cross-platform-approach-to-e-book-publishing#comments
>> 
>> add your comments :) tell them it came from FM ;)
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