Now, that we had our 1st docs revitalization meeting, some unsystematic thoughts / ideas about it.
(a)
Is there a systematic location where we can access meeting summaries and minutes to look up meeting details? As Server WG, we keep a simple list of dates and links at the bottom of our home page. Quite helpful to show progress (and keep track of it).
By the way you find the summary of our first meeting here and the full log here.
(b)
Much of the discussion was about technology: PRs, CI, repository structure, etc. I didn’t count the words, but estimated it was 95% about technology (and some design) and 5% about content.
I think that is a mismatch and wrote: “…without wanting to be negative: Before we build CI, we should have something to distribute?” That was certainly a bit overstated (@pbokoc sorry, didn’t want to offend someone). But the situation is not that we would have a bunch of content that we can’t publish because our current publication queue is overwhelmed or inadequate.
It’s more the other way around. We already have a solid working production line and a nice design, both sitting around desperately waiting for something new to do. There is certainly one or the other thing that can be improved, but there is nothing that works insufficiently or is in urgent need of improvement, before we are able to publish new content, restructure or update existing content.
Technology and design are obviously less tedious, show success more quickly and are more pleasing overall. But we have to be careful not to get completely distracted by this. Improvement in technology and design are currently comfort zone and “nice to have”. Content, on the other hand, is insufficient and obviously the tedious work, the uncomfortable, “dirty” zone.
To prevent any distraction, we should dedicate one of the next meetings exclusively to the content and repeat this regularly.
(c)
Looking at the number of participants in our resuscitation meeting, we should urgently start an onboarding process.
A first, relatively simple step would be to increase our visibility. Docs page needs to be visible right from the home page, in line with Engineering, Mindshare and Diversity. And we need animating text that attracts users and new contributors. (Box Program Management should be more in line with Council, maybe putting the “Fedora Project” box full width, beneath 2 boxes Council and ProgMan, then the aforementioned 4 boxes. Well, in growing in a kind of “deserts of boxes”).
Next, let’s see if we can improve support for typical authors (i.e., not programmers). For example, the listed editors are good for developers, but rather strange for typical authors. Something like AsciidocFX would be more appropriate. For this, one could perhaps develop a preview adapted to Fedora, which makes a local podman superfluous for authors.
And from feedback I got from some authors of Server WG we should consider to detail git handling.
Thanks for reading that long text.