Hi Cathy,
My responses are given in-line with your original message.
Dave,
Here is a suggestion that might help those of us who are new: a chart
or listing that attempts to show who is involved in the documentation
team and what they are doing.
While I understand the "nice to have" proposal you are suggesting, I
think you might be misinterpreting the word "Team". We use the term to
describe those folks who are currently contributing to the project in
whatever area they have chosen. In open source projects contributors
come and go, some contribute intermittently over the long term, others
might make substantial contribution on a one-off basis. There are people
with interests in other areas of the project, who strictly speaking are
not part of the documentation "Team", but provide valuable assistance in
other ways. Keeping track and maintaining the chart/list you suggest
would be a task I would be unwilling to take on, or that all those
people who could be listed would wish to be included. The best that I
can suggest is to look through the "Contributors" and "Acknowledgments"
tables in the front pages of all documentation publications.
It might be hard to ensure that everyone is included but perhaps it
could start with the people who have been actively participating in
the mailing list.
Only list moderators have access to the confidential list of subscriber
details. Posting to a mailing list is no indication of a person's actual
"Team" activity or involvement. Many people post, but only a few contribute.
There is little hierarchy
No, there is no hierarchy, only levels of experience and willingness to
contribute.
but some people have higher levels of formal responsibility and it
would be good to know who they are.
The only people who have formal responsibilities are TDF (The Document
Foundation) board, elected by TDF members and a couple of sub-committees.
See the "Foundation" and "Governance" menu entries
http://www.documentfoundation.org/ for more information.
TDF board oversees the general management of the LibreOffice and
Document Liberation projects. TDF has appointed a small number of
contractors to assist in moving some areas of the LibreOffice project
forward, note that I said "assist", not control. Oliver is a TDF
founding member, a long time supporter of this software's development
since the time when it was first open sourced under the name
OpenOffice.org and has taken on the responsibility of assisting those of
us who wish to contribute to the documentation. Beyond that, all
contributors are equal. In this respect the only difference between you
and I is that I have long term experience with the software and although
not always an active contributor I have followed the documentation
development from it's beginning, but just like you, I had to research
and ask questions to understand how things worked when I first took an
interest in the software and project.
If possible, it would be interesting to know people's geographical
locations as well.
Unless contributors chose to volunteer that information, I don't know
how we could establish that. FWIW. I was born (hatched?) in West London,
near Heathrow airport and now live in Northern Italy. Oliver tells me he
is of French extraction and now lives in Brazil. I think Paul recently
mentioned that he is Canadian. In a previous post Jean Weber said she is
in the northern part of Queensland, Australia and Hazel is in the UK
(she thinks). In his introductory post Jorge mentioned Costa Rica. My
best guess is that you are somewhere in North America. Likewise, I could
only guess at the location of any other volunteers.
I recall seeing at least one other open source project's website that
had a world map pinned with the location of it's contributors?
committers? or similar. If you believe something like this would serve
to create more of a "team spirit", put out a call on this list for
contributors to provide the information and put it on the documentation
wiki.
A chart or listing for the overall LibreOffice structure would also be
helpful. It need not be very detailed but could give a sense of how it
is organized and maybe who some of the main players are.
In terms of formal structure I can only refer you back to TDF web page menu.
For LibreOffice project main areas of activity see the list under the
heading "Teams": https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Main_Page
For the organisation of the documentation development, please put
forward specific recommendations/suggestions for the changes/additions
you want to make to
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development if there
are no objections made within a reasonable period of time (we are all
subject to peer review), you are free to go ahead and make those
changes, or find someone willing to make them for you.
Not sure what you mean by "main players", because in my mind that
creates an idea of an organization structured like a corporation, rather
than volunteer driven project. If you mean the people widely recognized
as being most active within the project, I am not sure how those people
could be identified, with a few exceptions, an individual's level of
activity often changes. Then there are those people who are very active
and make vast contributions the project's success and progress with
their work outside of it's normal (formal?) structure. Not forgetting
the work of the folks in the Ask LibreOffice forum and other similarly
associated sections of the project.
I believe that Jean Weber (the former team lead) would qualify as the
longest serving, still active contributor to the documentation.
It should be possible to produce these without significant effort.
On the contrary, much of what you are asking for would take considerable
effort and demand even more of mine, or someone else's already very
limited spare time.
Or better still, they already exist and just need to be linked to.
Other than the links I have given above I am not aware of other links
that may serve your purpose. However, if you or anyone else finds
something that could be usefully linked, I would be happy make the linkages.
Cheers,
Cathy
Sorry if I appear negative, which I am definitely not trying to be, but
I am having difficulty in getting a handle on your perspective of how an
open source project functions. By it's very nature, being supported
(operated?) mainly by individuals from many countries, speaking
different languages, from a wide variety of cultures and each of those
individuals contributing to any area of a project in which they have an
interest, knowledge or experience, open source volunteer projects cannot
be neatly compartmentalized and structured. Some open source projects
are sponsored by corporations who exercise a measure of
management/control over those projects and may have a more formal
structure. In part TDF/LibreOffice came into being in order to break
away from such corporate management.
Cheers,
Dave