Volunteer to Proofread (Starting with the website.)

How does one volunteer to be a proof reader? I'd like to help, because
the grammar on the libreoffice.org site is kicking my a**. I'd say
my English is pretty swell, I don't (usually) make mistakes, and I certainly
don't use Google Translate on the front of a webpage, if you know what I'm
saying.

To which site might you be referring, I wonder. There are several
sites listed on http://www.libreoffice.org/international-sites/. I'm
not certain as to the usage of a translate tool on any of them. At
any rate, the l10n list (l10n+subscribe@libreoffice.org) would be more
appropriate to address your concerns, and offer your services, regarding
translation.

-- jdc

Hm... no, I believe I do mean on libreoffice.org there is some horrible
engrish...
If we take, for example,
http://www.libreoffice.org/home/why-use-libreoffice-at-home/, we read "Make
your children's homework!"
Moving on, http://www.libreoffice.org/home/why-use-libreoffice-in-business/ has
many classics, such as "You'll never lose any document!" or "You can exploit
your email (Outlook/Thunderbird) data in business operations."
Really? Exploit? I mean come on.
Just one more click away, on what is probably my favorite page,
http://www.libreoffice.org/home/why-use-libreoffice-in-government/, we have
this wonderful sentence, and I quote, "which protects from obsolescence of
protocol... ...for a long time and still be readable in future."

I must congratulate whoever wrote this (and I sincerely mean that with no
hint of sarcasm) on their... attempt to write properly, however it PAINS me
to have to read such writing on a website... advertising document creation.
Almost ironic, in a sense.

Also, that about Google Translate was a joke.

So, as I was saying earlier, the grammar on the libreoffice.org site is
atrocious, and I'd be happy to volunteer my time to fix it.

-Clayton (Town of Clay) Walker

Ah, very well then. To begin work on www.libreoffice.org you need to
create an account, and that account must have its privileges elevated
by David Nelson, the head of that project.

A link to create an account is:
http://www.libreoffice.org/ForumMemberProfile/register

A link to login to the Silverstripe back end is:
http://libreoffice.org/admin

And some helpful links on working with the Silverstripe framework are:

1) SilverStripe demo site: http://demo.silverstripe.com/
2) General documentation on SilverStripe, the CMS used for
libreoffice.org: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilverStripe
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilverStripe#Documentation
[3] http://doc.silverstripe.org/
3) Documentation that will be especially useful to you when learning
to contribute work via the SilverStripe back-end:
[1]
http://userhelp.silverstripe.org/for-website-content-editors/creating-and-editing-content/
[2]
http://userhelp.silverstripe.org/for-website-content-editors/working-with-images-and-documents/

I believe the pages you are referencing are due for an overhaul, so
don't feel you must stick to the bullet point layout.

Thank you for your offer, and welcome to the team.

-- jdc

Hi, :slight_smile:

by David Nelson, the head of that project.

Erm, well, I'm not the "head of the project" by any means, but I did a
lot of work on the site's pages and tend to fuss over them like a
mother hen.

Although I didn't write the "Why?" pages you're talking about,
Clayton. Sometimes we get volunteers who aren't mother-tongue English
speakers, and we don't turn down their contribution at all. We just do
extra proofreading and correction for them.

Someone had earmarked those pages to work on them, but that was some
days ago and I see they haven't started yet, so there's no reason why
you shouldn't jump in and start the ball rolling.

I created an account for you and gave you author permissions, and
mailed you the details off-list. Thanks for volunteering! :slight_smile:

David Nelson

Hi :slight_smile:

I realise you are not "head of the team" but you are excellent at co-ordinating
effort and freeing people up so that they (Hal & Barbara and possibly others i
don't notice) can get on with the heavy lifting. And you are blatantly doing a
lot of heavy lifting too. Seems like good leadership to me.

I think i could re-organise the "Get Help" web-page a bit if that's not too
cheeky. I think this order might be 'better'?

  * Accessibility information:
  * FAQs: contains System requirements:
  * Installation instructions:

  * Documentation:
  * Mailing lists:
  * IRC channels: It might be good practice for me to do something radical like
that. Or perhaps FAQs and Accessibility are usually at the end so people know
where to look for them?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom, :slight_smile:

I think i could re-organise the  "Get Help" web-page a bit if that's not too
cheeky.  I think this order might be 'better'?

* Accessibility information:
       * FAQs: contains System requirements:
       * Installation instructions:

* Documentation:
       * Mailing lists:
       * IRC channels: It might be good practice for me to do something radical like
that. Or perhaps FAQs and Accessibility are usually at the end so people know
where to look for them?

Thanks for the too-kind words, Tom, but I'm not sure they're justified. Anyway:

As regards changes to the site's IA, the path would be to sign-up for
the website mailing list, post a suggestion there, discuss the ideas
thoroughly with the other members of the website team, and with the
design team, and get their go-ahead before actually doing anything.
There are already discussions on the subject that are on-going there.
:wink:

If you're interested in some work, I'd have an idea to offer you if you like?

David Nelson

Hi :slight_smile:

Ok. I might not do the thing you ask but it would be good to hear.

I am on the website mailing list but haven't noticed any chats there for a
while. It's possible that i accidentally filtered or unsubscribed so i will
have a look. I thought you were the main person for the website anyway?

Many thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom, :slight_smile:

Ok.  I might not do the thing you ask but it would be good to hear.

OK, I'll start a new thread called "Template repository maintenance"
and post back there. Obviously, it's purely a tentative idea and thank
you for being willing to listen to it.

I am on the website mailing list but haven't noticed any chats there for a
while.  It's possible that i accidentally filtered or unsubscribed so i will
have a look.  I thought you were the main person for the website anyway?

The website mailing list is *very* active. Are you sure you're signed
up for the right list, Tom?

The subscription address is: website+subscribe@libreoffice.org

It's the best place for questions and discussions concerning
SilverStripe and anything a bit "webby".

David Nelson

Wow! Those are some obscure pages! Yes, they do look as though they have not
been as thoroughly ironed-out as some other pages although i am sure we are so
hasty right now that errors are possible everywhere.

I have to say that government documents tend to be hideously full of cliches and
buzz-words (oops is that old now?) and grotesquely long meandering sentences
that end up being almost completely meaningless. Almost like academic papers
but tending to induce winces at tautologies and mixed metaphors. By contrast
business documents should be
1. short
2. bullet pointed,
4. bad seplings and tpyos
5.Not quite laid out properly
9 inconsistent but very definite!

As for the quality of English i think what we have is far better than the
quality of English spoken by the vast majority of people here in England. One
quick trip down to any council housing estate would make you appreciate the
finesse and elegance we have on our website even before proofreading.

If you do proofread it down to boring correctness then i am sure it would be
appreciated tho :slight_smile:
Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

PS Wow, that fun :slight_smile:

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to point fingers and insult people, but I'm just
trying to point out where it's wrong. (I don't even know who wrote them in
the first place, nor do I care.) I'm only interested in fixing them.

Regarding what Mr. Davies was addressing, I don't aim to make the pages
boring, I just plan on bringing clarity to the statements.
Although the "Make your children's homework" statement was quite amusing.
A few exclamation marks here and there always lighten the mood, and a bit of
sarcasm never hurt anybody. (Unless it's an insult, but that's unrelated.)

As I was saying earlier, I'd be happy to help proof-read those sections, and
edit the mistakes, however I'd like to discuss layout and methods a bit
more. Should we speak in a boring mono-tone voice, or should we try to make
the site more personable? Obviously you speak to people looking for a home
option differently than you would a businessman, however where should the
line be drawn?

-Clayton (Ton of Clay) Walker

David, do you think I should sign up to the website mailing list?

Also, if we need any format pages, we could always look to other office
software web-pages, and look at what they find most important to display.

But if there's any style I particularly love, it's the sytle Apple uses.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html
A fairly long page, lots of nice images, and bolded text here and there.
Clean, readable, and very nice-looking.

Hi Clayton, :slight_smile:

Initially, I'd suggest that you read the Features section of the site,
and the sub-pages about the individual LibreOffice applications. My 2
cents would be to adopt a similar style layout-wise, and a similar
writing style, too.

That way, all content would be consistent, with no "mini-revolutions"
in a small subset of pages. 90% of the rest of the site content was
provided by myself, and I proofread/edited the rest, so my
*suggestion* would be to do the "Why?" pages on similar lines.

At a later date, we'll be re-visiting the page layouts with the
involvement of our Design team. At that time, we can spruce the page
presentations up a lot.

However, if you have new ideas about style and layouts, please do tell
us about them, so that we can take a look at them all together,
because fresh input is always welcome.

In any case, like Frank Sinatra sang, just do it your way, and then we
can take a look all together after.

And a big thanks for your help! :slight_smile:

David Nelson

Alright, cool.

Onto some critics, not so much ideas.
First off, my eyes just glazed over. I can't read walls of text. Inset
images are always nice, as long as they aren't too obtrusive and obscure. I
can provide screen shots from a Mac, as I'm using one now.
Speaking of which, another huge point would be cross platform support, that
is after all one of our larges selling points (next to the fact that it's
free.)
Also, an interesting Idea would be to just list VERY short bullet points,
maybe with tiny graphics included.

Just some ideas.

Another point is that it sounds like we are trying our hardest to convince
these people that we are up to standards, instead of boasting features that
make LO different and unique. We boast that we are the same.

Hi Clayton, :slight_smile:

David, do you think I should sign up to the website mailing list?

Yes, it would be a great idea. Most of the discussions about the
website take place on the website list, with some overflow onto the
design list (notably as regards graphics and the site CSS).

Also, if we need any format pages, we could always look to other office
software web-pages, and look at what they find most important to display.

But if there's any style I particularly love, it's the sytle Apple uses.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html
A fairly long page, lots of nice images, and bolded text here and there.
Clean, readable, and very nice-looking.

It's surely a nice site. Our design team is thinking about the
presentation aspects a lot, but there will probably be no *major*
changes for a few months, as we only just got through a pretty
gruelling process of getting the site live.

I think we're all taking a temporary breather while we focus on other
stuff a bit - although this in no way precludes the discussion and
development of ideas in the meantime.

But the site content is still under development in the Features, Why?
and About Us sections, so there's a *lot* of work to do there. And -
again - there is *no* reason why suggestions can't be made and
possibly implemented for the other sections of content.

David Nelson

Hi Clayton, :slight_smile:

Please do go ahead and write the kind of content you'd like to see.
Let your imagination go, and let your ideas flow.

Maybe focus on text first off, and then we can talk about graphics and
screenshots after? (Mac is OK-ish, Ubuntu fits perfectly with current
material, and Windows is a no-no for potential copyright reasons.)

David Nelson

True, but perhaps screenshots from Linux Mint would be better? After all, LM
is green, and that seems to be the current theme.
And I'll be fixing the grammatical errors, and then we can discuss layout
later, I like that idea.

One thing that I was going to mention (my main reason for joining this list actually) is the inconsistency between the application descriptions on the Why for...? pages.

Take Impress - described as a "A presentation", "Presentation" and "Presentation manager" on different pages. If we're describing the application, it should be something like Presentation manager or Presentation software, rather than just Presentation. That would describe the document produced by it. Same for the spreadsheet - Calc is a spreadsheet package, spreadsheet program and a spreadsheet application but is not a spreadsheet.

Then on the Why for NFPs and NGOs page, it describes tasks that the suite can do. "Word processor" is not a task nor is "Diagramming and charting tool". Better to make it like the other pages, and describe the applications contained within the suite IMO.

Clayton makes some good points about the need to get these right - this is where we're trying to sell the application to new users, so if it doesn't read right then we'll end up putting people off.

Jaxson Lee

Already working on it, I also noticed that. I also noticed that
the writer loved to mention the fact that it _CAN_ create professional
_LOOKING_ documents, as if it needed to be mentioned that software capable
of writing professional letters was hard to come by.
I also agree with you on the references, as well as filler sentences leading
nowhere.

One more thing I noticed was the personal style the writer chose, always
saying "they" and "you" and other words forcing LO down the readers throat.
I'm currently re-working the grammer and consistency, as well as removing
the redundancy. The actual content (or aim) isn't being changed, nor is the
layout and format (yet).

Clayton (Sky-) Walker