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Re: [wiki] What's on Your Documentation Wish List?
I might add that veterans can be just as lazy, if not more so, when it comes to documentation. In this case, the paradigm is likely that since they know how to do something, they don’t have to worry about it and certainly not waste time writing about it. Wrong again. If you got of the pot and scrippled something down, it would make a huge difference over time and people would thank you for it.
Maybe we should have an honors sections in the wiki, honoring those who contribute the most? Links to their wonderful Web site, promises of fame and fortune? Or maybe we need that money pool I mentioned above.
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Re: [wiki] What's on Your Documentation Wish List?
It seems a little bit disingenuous to ask for wishes, then critique every wish by finding some fault or flaw with it. If the answer to every wish is to tell those who wish “to start writing,” it seems little will change. In fact, if the decisions made in the past by those who are writing is to be the only way, then why bother with asking for wishes or ideas?
My intent here is not to add to the (hyper)critical nature of this dialog. Rather, it is to decipher what those who are writing documentation for Txp hope to get from this thread. Is this a writer-recruitment effort? Is it an appeal to Txp users for what they want to see? Is it a place to brainstorm? Is it a place to toss out ideas so that they can be quickly critiqued and shot down? Or, is it something else?
I’m merely curious and not attempting to toss more gas on the already blazing fires around here.
“Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.” General ‘Buck’ Turgidson
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Re: [wiki] What's on Your Documentation Wish List?
Hey, I’m sorry if I ruffled feathers. That wasn’t my intent, though I knew when I wrote that framing it via my frustrations might do so. As 6sig said, this is a wishlist topic, and to that end, I tried to articulate what I wish the docs would be.
If it makes any difference, my frustrations are as much about the documentation that’s not on the wiki as of the documentation that is, in which case there’s no reason for anybody’s panties to get bunched up.
If it is indeed as easy as you say, Destry, to start writing the docs—and if you think it safe to allow someone as raw as I am to write—then I’ll be signed up to write by Monday.
All I ask is that before then, may I be pointed to a style sheet, if one exists, or to a framework, likewise if it exists, from which I may begin?
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Re: [wiki] What's on Your Documentation Wish List?
For the record, my feathers aren’t ruffled in the least, nor are there “blazing fires” around here, not that I see anyway. I agree with everything you said, mgbales, and Elenita, and for the most part 6sigma (though if you think I’m being “(hyper)critical”, 6sigma, I think you’re being (ultra)sensitive.)
Elenita, the thread starter, said it best herself…
Do everyone a favor and put that information in the wiki. That’s the purpose of this post, after all.
I’ve just been trying to emphasize that, in my own, frank way. If anyone thinks I’m “disengenuous” about TextBook, you haven’t done your homework.
Yes, this thread is a wishlist, and it starts with that. It gives potential writers (whoever they are) a place to look for topics to write about — hypothetically. People can interpret that however they want, but it all comes back to what Elenita said above.
mgbales, we need a good article framework, I agree, and since we don’t have one and since you commented about what you would do if TextBook was your editing project, I propose as your first writing assignment you draft TextBook’s article framework guidelines. How’s that? Then you can follow the writing process exactly as you design it. I trust you’ll do it in the interest of the community. Note I have started a thread, Draft: TextBook Writing, Editing, and Collaboration Guidelines, with the purpose of drafting a new set of community-favored guidelines; you might use that thread to your benefit.
Also, I’ve started using TxB’s Community Portal page as a place for documentation suggestions, among other things.
In any case, mgbales, I wouldn’t make it too difficult, because that’s the rub; if you make it too difficult, you make it harder than it already is to get writers. Nevertheless, I do agree, we need a simple and sensible framework in place for potential writers to follow.
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