Questions galore!

Hi Documentation Team,

I volunteer most of my time as a mod over at the LibreOffice Ask site,
and I have a whole mess of questions for you. I'll try to ask just a
few per email, but feel free to nudge me if I should rebase any of my
emails into smaller chunks :slight_smile:

* First off, does anyone here spend any time on IRC?

I tried joining #libreoffice-doc, but found myself rather alone. Being
able to pop over to #libreoffice-qa or #tdf-infra can be rather handy
for quick questions, and it would be great to be able to wander over
to a documentation channel and ask questions or direct some
praise/bugs/users/etc... in your direction.

* What's the status of documentation for LO 4.0?

I've seen some traffic on the documentation mailing list pertaining to
4.0-specific docs, however I see only a few chapters in "Getting
Started with LibreOffice" available here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

I didn't see anything for 4.0 or for 3.6 here:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

I did find the 'status of tasks' page section for 4.0 documentation,
but don't see any schedule or estimated dates for delivery:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks#Status_of_tasks_-_LO_v4.0

When 4.0 is released, I assume that we're going to see an influx of
user questions on the Ask site. If there isn't 4.0-specific
documentation released on a particular topic, should we direct users
to older published documentation, or should we link them to
in-progress documentation specific to 4.0?

And for a related question...

* Where should we point users who are seeking documentation?

I've found quite a number of different pages containing documentation,
both on and off the wiki.

The wiki page for 'Publications' mentions that "Everything on the
official page usually appears here a few days earlier," so is there
any reason for me to use the "official" page? Maybe because that will
provide users with more permanent links?

Speaking of which...

* Did the urls for the "general faq" change recently?

A number of volunteers have used the "general faq" as a reference when
answering questions on the Ask site. In one case, I used an entry
regarding java dependencies to answer a user's question on whether
java was required to use Base. When I checked the URL later, I found
that it was redirected/missing, with a "Page not found" error:

original url:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/

now redirects to (Page not found):
https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java

You can find the original content here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20121105054406/http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/

We can't ensure that externally-linked content will always remain
available, but it would be great if we could provide permalinks for
our internal documentation. That way, questions that we answer with
links to the docs will remain relevant and helpful for a much longer
period of time.

Speaking of FAQs...

* We have 3+ FAQs and the Ask site -- what can we do to reduce
repetition? (DRY)

There's one FAQ on the main website, one on the wiki, plus a small dev faq:
- https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/
- https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq
- https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/FAQ

The Ask site is perhaps the newest addition, but contains many more
questions (~3000), a good number of which are related to or could be
answered by the three existing FAQs.

Content on the Ask site is licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, and so
good answers (and good questions) may easily be integrated back into
one of the existing FAQs. Similarly, content from the existing FAQs
(including unanswered questions) could easily be introduced at the Ask
site, which may provide an easier format for asking and answering
questions.

Has anyone suggested a plan for better integration of these tools? I
can see benefits of maintaining a concise FAQ for some common, key
questions, but I worry about costs of keeping information relevant and
up to date if we have the same content duplicated across multiple
pages on multiple sites.

Hi Robinson,

I will answer the FAQ questions as I am involved in this. Answers inline.

* Did the urls for the "general faq" change recently?

A number of volunteers have used the "general faq" as a reference when
answering questions on the Ask site. In one case, I used an entry
regarding java dependencies to answer a user's question on whether
java was required to use Base. When I checked the URL later, I found
that it was redirected/missing, with a "Page not found" error:

original url:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/

now redirects to (Page not found):
https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java

You can find the original content here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20121105054406/http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/

We can't ensure that externally-linked content will always remain
available, but it would be great if we could provide permalinks for
our internal documentation. That way, questions that we answer with
links to the docs will remain relevant and helpful for a much longer
period of time.

The FAQ section was indeed changed to the "About Us" section after a discussion on the marketing list that I initiated. The rationale behind this is/was that the FAQ was not being used for LibreOffice specific questions and had been set up in 2010 prior to Ask.LibreOffice.org. The Ask site was put together in order to provide users with a more organized zone for such information as well as to replace the FAQ.

Before moving the FAQ, I looked for, and found, the answers to all questions on the FAQ's that related to question regarding "problem fixing" with LibreOffice on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site. These FAQ items were then purged from the FAQ and the FAQ was moved to the "About Us" section.

As well, the larger questions then remaining on the FAQ related to the TDF/LibreOffice project. Thus, the About Us section was decided as the most appropriate section of the site to post it. So, the FAQ on the About Us section is not a general LibreOffice FAQ section for trouble shooting, but an FAQ with regards to historical questions relating to the community/project and of information relating to Licensing question, which we must publish as per LGPL rules. BTW, the FAQ may even be cut back even further once I we update the site a bit more. IMO, that particular FAQ will not appear in its present state for long, this, of course depending on our (marketing or website or ...) prioritized "to-do" lists.

Speaking of FAQs...

* We have 3+ FAQs and the Ask site -- what can we do to reduce
repetition? (DRY)

There's one FAQ on the main website, one on the wiki, plus a small dev faq:
  -https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/
  -https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq
  -https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/FAQ

The Ask site is perhaps the newest addition, but contains many more
questions (~3000), a good number of which are related to or could be
answered by the three existing FAQs.

Content on the Ask site is licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, and so
good answers (and good questions) may easily be integrated back into
one of the existing FAQs. Similarly, content from the existing FAQs
(including unanswered questions) could easily be introduced at the Ask
site, which may provide an easier format for asking and answering
questions.

Has anyone suggested a plan for better integration of these tools? I
can see benefits of maintaining a concise FAQ for some common, key
questions, but I worry about costs of keeping information relevant and
up to date if we have the same content duplicated across multiple
pages on multiple sites.

I have gone to all three FAQ's and have found no duplication of information. In fact all three FAQ's are quite specific to their particular area which is where I would assume a user/members would go to first look/find an answer to their question. But, reasonably speaking, our sites are quite large, and even I get lost with the amount of information available on the pages (especially the wiki).

I am sorry if the "Get Help" FAQ move caused this headache. Let me know if there has been a loss of some important information and I will make arrangements to post it back onto the Ask.LibreOffice.org site for future reference.

As for the duplication of the FAQ of information and the Ask.LibreOffice.org site as well as of updating/syncing this information -- no, no such discussions have occurred. Be aware, that from time to time these FAQ may be rationalized depending on their various team's decisions, also be aware that the product of the FAQ information on the wiki pages are not from user questions BUT more from the contributing members organizing of the information/materials ... so, sometime, the information is more relative to the contributing member and not a regular user.

HOWEVER, the bottom line is that we are here to help our users with questions and to provide them with the best answers we can possibly offer. IMO, most questions users ask on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site are probably best answered there, and, IMO, I don't see a reason to work on any user-related FAQ when the Ask.LibreOffice.org site is probably the best type of solution for a good living/breathing FAQ site.

My question to you now is this; have the mods/admins discussed eliminating duplicated questions on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site in order to make it more effective?

Cheers,

Marc

Hi :slight_smile:
The main remaining problem seems to be that the Faq page about java on the official LibreOffice website is a 404 Not found
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/
 
now redirects to (Page not found):
https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java

I tried forwarding this email to the websites team but i may have got their address wrong.
Apols, thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Documentation Team,

* First off, does anyone here spend any time on IRC?

I tried joining #libreoffice-doc, but found myself rather alone. Being
able to pop over to #libreoffice-qa or #tdf-infra can be rather handy
for quick questions, and it would be great to be able to wander over
to a documentation channel and ask questions or direct some
praise/bugs/users/etc... in your direction.

I don't spend time there, and I don't know if anyone else does. I'll
let others answer if they do. We're a very small team, at least of
active members.

* What's the status of documentation for LO 4.0?

We're doing it as fast as we can (very small team of active members),
starting with the Getting Started guide.

I've seen some traffic on the documentation mailing list pertaining to
4.0-specific docs, however I see only a few chapters in "Getting
Started with LibreOffice" available here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

I'm uploading them as we finish them. Hope to have the book done by
the end of next week, but no promises.

I didn't see anything for 4.0 or for 3.6 here:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

Only one book for v3.6: the Writer Guide; we didn't do one for v3.5.
I'll put a link to it on that page as soon as I get a chance. Not sure
when that will be, so if someone else with write access to that page
wants to update it, please do.

I did find the 'status of tasks' page section for 4.0 documentation,
but don't see any schedule or estimated dates for delivery:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks#Status_of_tasks_-_LO_v4.0

"When we can" is the only answer to schedules and estimated dates. Did
I mention what a small active team we have? :wink:

When 4.0 is released, I assume that we're going to see an influx of
user questions on the Ask site. If there isn't 4.0-specific
documentation released on a particular topic, should we direct users
to older published documentation, or should we link them to
in-progress documentation specific to 4.0?

Either or both, depending on the topic. Unless the question is related
to a new or changed feature, the older published documentation should
be fine.

And for a related question...

* Where should we point users who are seeking documentation?

I've found quite a number of different pages containing documentation,
both on and off the wiki.

The wiki page for 'Publications' mentions that "Everything on the
official page usually appears here a few days earlier," so is there
any reason for me to use the "official" page? Maybe because that will
provide users with more permanent links?

The website page has links only to the full books.
The wiki page has links to individual chapters as well as full books.
Sometimes linking to a chapter might be more useful; they are much
smaller downloads, which many users would appreciate.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
The official LibreOffice website keeps having wobbly moments due to the strain of so many downloads!!  So, it might be faster to get the official guides from the wiki. 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

Guides for older branches tend to be good enough for much more recent branches.  So, for Calc and Base you need to go back to the 3.4.x but that should be plenty good enough

Bear in mind that there are only around 4ish documenters to cover the work of 500 devs.  Also MS Office only has 1 branch every 4 years (ish) whereas LibreOffice has 2 per year.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
The main remaining problem seems to be that the Faq page about java on the official LibreOffice website is a 404 Not found
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/

now redirects to (Page not found):
https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java

I tried forwarding this email to the websites team but i may have got their address wrong.
Apols, thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

The only location I would say it could redirect is back to the Ask.LibreOffice.org site. This is where the answer resides! IMO, it would be better to find the instances of the links and remove them. There could not be that many as surely, the Ask.LibreOffice.org site would have either escalated that particular answer with the link to the top of the "best answers" list or the java description would have been spelled out in one of the answers and escalated to the top.

Is there a way to remove the answers with the links and escalate the proper answer in the Ask site?

Marc

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
The official LibreOffice website keeps having wobbly moments due to the strain of so many downloads!! So, it might be faster to get the official guides from the wiki.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

Guides for older branches tend to be good enough for much more recent branches. So, for Calc and Base you need to go back to the 3.4.x but that should be plenty good enough

Bear in mind that there are only around 4ish documenters to cover the work of 500 devs. Also MS Office only has 1 branch every 4 years (ish) whereas LibreOffice has 2 per year.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

The LibreOffice website and the wiki are on the same server. Both sites were migrated to newer servers today and the rest of the infrastructure is being worked on as the team is able to devote their time to it. The push is on to get the move on it at the highest priority ... but life also gets in the way.

I don't believe we have any guides on the site, there may be links to them, but they reside on the wiki site.

Cheers,

Marc

Apologies for not responding sooner -- I've been spending my spare
moments since Thursday dealing with questions and bugs relating to
4.0.

The FAQ section was indeed changed to the "About Us" section after a
discussion on the marketing list that I initiated. The rationale behind this
is/was that the FAQ was not being used for LibreOffice specific questions
and had been set up in 2010 prior to Ask.LibreOffice.org. The Ask site was
put together in order to provide users with a more organized zone for such
information as well as to replace the FAQ.

Before moving the FAQ, I looked for, and found, the answers to all questions
on the FAQ's that related to question regarding "problem fixing" with
LibreOffice on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site. These FAQ items were then
purged from the FAQ and the FAQ was moved to the "About Us" section.

Okay, so to summarize, the FAQ was slimmed-down, purged of questions
regarding "problem-fixing", and moved under the "About Us" section.
Gotcha.

As well, the larger questions then remaining on the FAQ related to the
TDF/LibreOffice project. Thus, the About Us section was decided as the most
appropriate section of the site to post it. So, the FAQ on the About Us
section is not a general LibreOffice FAQ section for trouble shooting, but
an FAQ with regards to historical questions relating to the
community/project

Ah okay. This FAQ has a historical component to it.

and of information relating to Licensing question, which
we must publish as per LGPL rules.

I don't believe that we have any obligations under the LGPL to
distribute anything other than the code (or content) + the LGPL
license. It's beneficial for us to have a Licensing FAQ, but I don't
think it's something we must have.

BTW, the FAQ may even be cut back even
further once I we update the site a bit more. IMO, that particular FAQ will
not appear in its present state for long, this, of course depending on our
(marketing or website or ...) prioritized "to-do" lists.

Fair enough. The FAQ is rather small, so it might be easiest to
consolidate the questions and answers to a single page.

* We have 3+ FAQs and the Ask site -- what can we do to reduce
repetition? (DRY)

I have gone to all three FAQ's and have found no duplication of information.
In fact all three FAQ's are quite specific to their particular area which is
where I would assume a user/members would go to first look/find an answer to
their question. But, reasonably speaking, our sites are quite large, and
even I get lost with the amount of information available on the pages
(especially the wiki).

Yes, that's definitely something that happens to me :slight_smile:

When I first went to the odfauthors.org site, I thought that it was a
site for end-users because of the highly-prominent links to books for
sale, but now I believe that the website is largely focused on
internal production. Perhaps there's something we can do to make
things more clear to regular users as well as to our volunteer
community.

I am sorry if the "Get Help" FAQ move caused this headache. Let me know if
there has been a loss of some important information and I will make
arrangements to post it back onto the Ask.LibreOffice.org site for future
reference.

Thanks. Is all of the content on that site available under a license
compatible with that of the Ask site? (CC-BY-SA 3.0) If so, I can just
copy-in anything I need from the cached copy up on Archive.org.

As for the duplication of the FAQ of information and the Ask.LibreOffice.org
site as well as of updating/syncing this information -- no, no such
discussions have occurred. Be aware, that from time to time these FAQ may be
rationalized depending on their various team's decisions, also be aware that
the product of the FAQ information on the wiki pages are not from user
questions BUT more from the contributing members organizing of the
information/materials ... so, sometime, the information is more relative to
the contributing member and not a regular user.

Okay, cool. I was just curious to see how much conversation was going on :slight_smile:

HOWEVER, the bottom line is that we are here to help our users with
questions and to provide them with the best answers we can possibly offer.

I definitely agree!

IMO, most questions users ask on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site are probably
best answered there, and, IMO, I don't see a reason to work on any
user-related FAQ when the Ask.LibreOffice.org site is probably the best type
of solution for a good living/breathing FAQ site.

Using the Ask site as the general FAQ as we go forward sounds like a
solid plan to me. The FAQ on the wiki currently has some overlap with
the Ask site:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq

What do you guys think about migrating questions from that FAQ to the
Ask site? I'd be happy to shepherd that work, if that's amenable to
you.

My question to you now is this; have the mods/admins discussed eliminating
duplicated questions on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site in order to make it
more effective?

We've had some discussion, but we certainly need to have more! :slight_smile:

On the Ask site mods have the ability to close questions as
duplicates, and now that we've got a few more active mods, we're
working on cleaning-up a large backlog of out-of-date and "abandoned"
questions. Out of 3000 questions, about 1,500 are still open (i.e.
they haven't been closed or resolved with a good answer).

One of the best ways for us to improve the quality of the Ask site and
to make it more effective is to improve the quality of the question
titles. A title of "Form Scrambled" or "soffice.bin" is much less
helpful than "Base: How can I make the fields on my contact management
form save their position?" or "Why is Comodo antivirus giving me a
CloudScanner.Trojan.Gen@2@1 alert for soffice.bin when I try to open
LO 4.0.0.3?". For now, only mods and very-high-karma users can make
these changes, so it'll take a little while to work through the site.

I've been talking with Joel Madero and Joren De Cuyper (QA) about ways
that we can improve communication between different groups of people.
It's great to be able to ask the QA folks what they think should end
up in the bugtracker and what they think should stay as a question on
the Ask site, or coordinate on some other aspect of the project. I'd
love to see similar collaboration/easy communication with other groups
like the Documentation Team. A few ideas off the top of my head

- When answering a Q, there should be a clear/easy way to ask the Doc
Team where to find the latest documentation on a particular topic

- If "How do I do X?" comes up and we don't have (can't find?) good
docs on it, there should be an easy way to ping the Doc team about the
need [File as an enhancement bug?]

- The text of really good Answers should be fed back to the Doc team
for inclusion in the next iteration of the documentation [Not sure if
this should be a pull or a push action]

Again, thank you for the detailed answers. Please let me know about my
questions/suggestions, and if you have any further suggestions about
collaboration!

Cheers,
--Robinson 'qubit' Tryon

Hi :slight_smile:
The latest documentation is always at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

That page also gives access to archived documentation for previous branches and has links to 3rd party documentation, How-To videos and other resources.  The docs team is very short of people so if you want things added to documentation it's better to push information their way rather than wait for them to pull it in.  On the other hand they do get notes from the devs so that they know what to add for new features as they get added.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Or as Daniel Webster might have said, "It is a small team, and yet
there are those who love it!" :slight_smile:

Given the size of your workforce, is there anything that the rest of
the volunteers on the project can do to help get the 4.0 documentation
out? Maybe a "documentation sprint" ? :slight_smile:

If there's any work that could be chunked-up, like proofreading or
feature-confirmation, that might be a good way to offload some of the
tasks. It also looks like contributors need a separate log-in for the
odfauthors.org website -- I should reinvestigate SSO and see if that
could further-reduce hurdles to inter-group participation in the LO
community.

Thanks,
--R

Hi :slight_smile:

Hi!

Bear in mind that there are only around 4ish documenters to cover the work
of 500 devs. Also MS Office only has 1 branch every 4 years (ish) whereas
LibreOffice has 2 per year.

I've heard the same story from the QA team: A few (determined) hands
for bucket-loads of bugs. It sounds like we should do some recruiting!
:slight_smile:

Who is in charge of the LibreOffice volunteers? Is there anyone who
wears a hat like "Volunteer Coordinator" ?

--R

The specific case here has been dealt with, so I consider that issue
resolved. In the more general case, I guess the question is "When
linking to content, what documentation resources will be least
susceptible to link rot?"

--R

Hi :slight_smile:
The Publications page is the least likely to change.  Any time i change a name it tends to be fairly early on and i leave a redirect from the old name.  The Publications page has been around so long now it would be problematic to change it so it's best kept as it is.  Pages such as the 3rd party page and the video and other resources are linked to from that Publications page. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Ubuntu has "Community Development" people and that seems to be a term used in voluntary sector organisations (and others) that are outside of the IT industry in the UK.

The Docs Team has been lucky to attract a few new people recently but inevitably it can be difficult to join in at the start and learn the systems so drop-out rate is highest in the early days.  Personally i just hang out on various lists and if i spot someone i think would be good here or would enjoy it here (usually both) then i try to push them into this list but i'm not very good at following-up when they do join the list.  I also try a generic post to the Users List every 6 months or so to encourage people from there to join in with the docs team.

Each team is pretty much left to it's own ways of doing things and that sometimes means teams compete with each other for people that seem keen to be involved.  It's usually very positive and usually used as an excuse to raise the profile of all the other teams at the same time.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Well, realistically, all of them. Our work is based on the numbers of contributors, and, like any other part of the project, we cannot force anyone to work on anything that they do not want to work on. So, IMO, unless there are very committed people on board, then, all work on the project is susceptible to link rot.

Cheers,

Marc

When I first went to the odfauthors.org site, I thought that it was a
site for end-users because of the highly-prominent links to books for
sale, but now I believe that the website is largely focused on
internal production. Perhaps there's something we can do to make
things more clear to regular users as well as to our volunteer
community.

ODFAuthors have been partners with OOo and in particular with LibreOffice from the very start. Jean Hollis Weber of ODFAuthors is one of our most prolific contributors on the project, we also make use of ODFAuthor resources and goodwill. I believe it is we who should be thankful for ODFAuthors helping us out with the docs teams and resources. I doubt things would go as smoothly without Jean and her team at ODFAuthors who work at quite high professional standards.

I am sorry if the "Get Help" FAQ move caused this headache. Let me know if
there has been a loss of some important information and I will make
arrangements to post it back onto the Ask.LibreOffice.org site for future
reference.

Thanks. Is all of the content on that site available under a license
compatible with that of the Ask site? (CC-BY-SA 3.0) If so, I can just
copy-in anything I need from the cached copy up on Archive.org.

As far as I can remember, all that same information is already up on the Ask site. You just have to find it. No need to go to Archive.org.

IMO, most questions users ask on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site are probably
best answered there, and, IMO, I don't see a reason to work on any
user-related FAQ when the Ask.LibreOffice.org site is probably the best type
of solution for a good living/breathing FAQ site.

Using the Ask site as the general FAQ as we go forward sounds like a
solid plan to me. The FAQ on the wiki currently has some overlap with
the Ask site: > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq

What do you guys think about migrating questions from that FAQ to the
Ask site? I'd be happy to shepherd that work, if that's amenable to
you.

I don't think this would be an acceptable option as the FAQ is, again, used in large part for contributor work. IMO, there is nothing wrong with overlapping/doubling or information as people tend to operate in different ways; some like to get information from FAQ's, others from Ask sites, others from mailing lists, others from forums ... IMO, it is up to the site maintainers to triage the information appropriately so that it is factual (as best as one can get) for their own particular user base. To me, it doesn't sound like a good idea to remove a contributor tool for users when we are in need of contributors.

My question to you now is this; have the mods/admins discussed eliminating
duplicated questions on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site in order to make it
more effective?

We've had some discussion, but we certainly need to have more! :slight_smile:

On the Ask site mods have the ability to close questions as
duplicates, and now that we've got a few more active mods, we're
working on cleaning-up a large backlog of out-of-date and "abandoned"
questions. Out of 3000 questions, about 1,500 are still open (i.e.
they haven't been closed or resolved with a good answer).

One of the best ways for us to improve the quality of the Ask site and
to make it more effective is to improve the quality of the question
titles. A title of "Form Scrambled" or "soffice.bin" is much less
helpful than "Base: How can I make the fields on my contact management
form save their position?" or "Why is Comodo antivirus giving me a
CloudScanner.Trojan.Gen@2@1 alert for soffice.bin when I try to open
LO 4.0.0.3?". For now, only mods and very-high-karma users can make
these changes, so it'll take a little while to work through the site.

I've been talking with Joel Madero and Joren De Cuyper (QA) about ways
that we can improve communication between different groups of people.
It's great to be able to ask the QA folks what they think should end
up in the bugtracker and what they think should stay as a question on
the Ask site, or coordinate on some other aspect of the project. I'd
love to see similar collaboration/easy communication with other groups
like the Documentation Team. A few ideas off the top of my head

  - When answering a Q, there should be a clear/easy way to ask the Doc
Team where to find the latest documentation on a particular topic

  - If "How do I do X?" comes up and we don't have (can't find?) good
docs on it, there should be an easy way to ping the Doc team about the
need [File as an enhancement bug?]

  - The text of really good Answers should be fed back to the Doc team
for inclusion in the next iteration of the documentation [Not sure if
this should be a pull or a push action]

This sounds more like a business model/plan where the people who work on the project are considered employees and not volunteers. While this sounds like an ideal plan, I would venture to guess that an organizational scheme of this magnitude would not work. This would set up too many regulations rather than opportunities to contribute. We are built on a meritocratic philosophy which is why we have seen so much growth in our dev section -- this is what is so attractive to our contributors. Unfortunately, our other contributor branches have not been able to keep up to the pace. It is all up to us to trumpet the values of our project and try to attract contributor in our branches.

IMO, the quickest fix for the problem at hand is still the rationalization of the Ask site, culling the question/answers that are on the database at the present time ... I know it is a big job ... but regardless of any fix, you will still have to do this. It also sounds like the Ask site should try to involve more contributors on their site to help with responses to user questions, have you tried to grow your contributor base by inviting regular competent participants to join your ranks?

IMO, the fact that there are different contributor FAQ's are fine, the user FAQ is supposed to the the Ask site. And yes, unfortunately, there may be some overlapping, but the quality of answers on the site still remains the responsibility of the people behind the Ask site.

Note that I am not annoyed with your questions nor with your suggestions. But, it looks to me that you are looking for answers to the problems on the Ask site in the wrong places. Once the Ask site is cleaned up, you may find that most of the problems will have lessened.

But, as we are following meritocratic philosophical values on the project, there is nothing to stop you from organizing such a structure as you describe, and, perhaps it may be adopted by the rest of us. Put in writing on a wiki for people to read and if you find enough contributors to run it, then we may all follow. It may work!

Again, thank you for the detailed answers. Please let me know about my
questions/suggestions, and if you have any further suggestions about
collaboration!

Cheers,
--Robinson 'qubit' Tryon

Cheers,

Marc

Hi :slight_smile:
I htought all the wiki and documentation used "CC-BY-SA 3.0" or earlier versions of the same license.  I think copying from one to the other is fine.  The trouble only starts when you try to delete stuff from any 1 place. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Although the wiki pages themselves are CC-BY-SA, most of the user
guide chapters use CC-BY 3.0 (not CC-BY-SA) due to their historical
origin as OOo guides. I have never heard of any of the contributors to
those chapters objecting to incorporating material from them into
other documents licensed under CC-BY-SA.

--Jean

Our biggest need is for people to update chapters from one version to
the next, and preferably to take responsibility for an entire book or
a specific topic area (such as printing or styles or graphics) that is
covered in several books. However, this isn't a one-off commitment and
requires some study of our style guide and template as well as good
writing skills in English.

The next most important need is for people to review draft and
published chapters for accurancy. Anyone can do this, and it's not a
major commitment of time. It's not even necessary to have an
ODFAuthors login, though that helps by making the process of returning
edited files easier. As an alternative, people can download published
chapters from the wiki, then write an email describing any errors
they've found and post the email to the Docs list.

--Jean

When I say "link rot," I'm specifically referring to the issue of
content remaining accessible over time via a particular URL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot

I understand that LibreOffice needs someone to keep the servers
running, however unless there's an issue with our software, floeff
alone could probably keep all of the pages on the wiki, the Ask site,
etc... up and running (as static content) for the next decade. If
we're going to link Answers on the ask site to content outside of the
Ask site, we'd like those links to remain accessible for as long as
possible.

To ask a slightly different question: Is there any plan within LO to
remove hosted content or to further change urls for hosted content?

Thanks,
--R