Easing the Volunteer Crunch

[kismert]

Suggestion: could the on-line Joomla! documentation borrow the excellent idea of User-Contributed Notes from the PHP on-line manual? This would:

• Allow people to easily contribute a useful point or tip. This could be a good way to gather that elusive troubleshooting material.
• Reduce the amount of searching needed when the official documentation is inadequate.
• Let many eyes scan for corrections and missing information. Notes could be combed periodically by the documentation team, and be selectively incorporated into the official docs. Submitters of incorporated notes would receive credit as a documentation contributor!

This micro-volunteer approach would lower the perceived barrier to contributing to the documentation. Busy people who are reluctant to over-commit can still contribute an idea that is important to them, while it is fresh in their mind.

-Ken

[eyezberg]

Great idea. Set up Help as the wiki pages with comments open to regged members (moderated)

[kismert]

Sounds perfect.

[Michelle Bisson]

Thank you for your suggestions!

[visionspin]

Yes, we definitely need to do something to lower the intimidation factor of such a huge amount of work with just a few people to do it. I recommend that people contributing to it be able to reference the Editorial Style Guide as well, to keep us all on the same terms, etc.

[eyezberg]

A month later..? any chance you want some help there?

[ianmac]

Has anybody followed up Joe on this?  He's been around Joomla! for a while...  there has to be something that we can get him to write?

Ian

[kismert]

All,

I believe I have found the code php.net uses to power it's official manual:

phpdoc: http://www.theprojects.org/php/phpdoc.php

I don't have enough PHP experience to evaluate it properly, but some of you PHP gurus out there could easily make a quick judgement on the practicality of using this for official Joomla docs.

-Ken

[Michelle Bisson]

Joe,

I have sent you a pm.

[Michelle Bisson]

Ken,

Are you available to help us on the doc team?

[kismert]

Michelle,

Yes, I am available on a limited basis  . I did let visionspin know this a while back. Let me know when you next meeting is.

-Ken

[Michelle Bisson]

kismert,

Keep an eye on this forum.  I will soon be telling how people can get involved in the doc project without committing to it. We are restructing to simplify the process of contributing.

In the meantime take time to download 1.5 and try it out as we will need people who are familiar with this version.

Thanks!

[eyezberg]

Sorry Miichelle, had turned off notification for PMs
I can start on some screens as I test SVN, anything more urgent than others?

[Michelle Bisson]

We are currently setting up the structure so that we can recieve contributions from community members without joining the doc team.

In the meantime, what is very important is for those who wish to help to get familiar with 1.5 and it's new features as that is what we will be focusing on.

[Michelle Bisson]

All those who have volunteered to contribute to the User Documentation Project, please read :

How you can contribute to the Documentation Project?

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,102299.0.html

Thank you!

[CirTap]

I believe I have found the code php.net uses to power it's official manual:

phpdoc: http://www.theprojects.org/php/phpdoc.php

The PHP manual is based on and built from XML files, or SGML to be correct. The module you found is not the one used for the user comments but for creating the various output formats from the "Docbook" xml files: http://www.php.net/manual/about.generate.php

CirTap