About the LO documentation group join-up process

When I looked at https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/join-the-documentation-team/i-want-to-write-technical-books/, there were just a few things I felt might improve it.

It assumes the reader knows how to join a mailing list. The LO mailing lists might be the first one a person has tried to join. And for myself, knowing that different mailing list programs have different requirements for the subscription/registration process, I personally felt uncertain what to do after reading:

"[...] from other volunteers. Subscribe to join the documentation team.

Please register in our documentation mainling list:

documentation@global.libreoffice.org: Discussions [...]"

So I have a few suggestions:

1. Correct that tiny typo: mainling

2. Expand it a little to say something like:

"To join the documentation team and help our efforts, subscribe to one or more of the mailing lists below. You do this simply by emailing a message (any message)[*] to the list you're interested in.

[*] Is that true? Or are there some requirements? I guessed a subject line of "subscribe and/or a body that included the word 'subscribe'.

3. Perhaps add a PS to that page (or include in the Welcome email), a note explaining the etiquette required for this ML.
Covering stuff like how to include (obfuscate?) email addresses in messages, use or restriction on links to personal websites, as well as a simple statement about respect and so forth.

(This occurred to me because I almost included a link to my blog in my signature, then felt that doing so could well be out of place and seen as self-promotion. IMHO Dave Barton's note just now about not changing the subject line, to keep messages in a thread, would be a good example of one of the etiquette rules.)

Regarding the sign-up process, which also contains the excellent advice to browse the ML archives, on the three occasions I visited the link http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.documentfoundation.libreoffice.documentation over the course of a couple of hours, it always failed with an "Error 522 Connection timed out". (Ray ID: 4dc62aba5b3a942b • 2019-05-25 08:34:22 UTC)
Ditto just now, which is a couple of days after I first drafted this message. From the error page:

"What can I do?
If you're a visitor of this website:
Please try again in a few minutes.

If you're the owner of this website:
Contact your hosting provider letting them know your web server is not completing requests. An Error 522 means that the request was able to connect to your web server, but that the request didn't finish. The most likely cause is that something on your server is hogging resources."

HTH,

luke

Howdy,

In line comments

When I looked at

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/join-the-documentation-team/i-want-to-write-technical-books/,

there were just a few things I felt might improve it.

It assumes the reader knows how to join a mailing list. The LO mailing
lists might be the first one a person has tried to join. And for
myself, knowing that different mailing list programs have different
requirements for the subscription/registration process, I personally
felt uncertain what to do after reading:

"[...] from other volunteers. Subscribe to join the documentation team.

Please register in our documentation mainling list:

documentation@global.libreoffice.org: Discussions [...]"

So I have a few suggestions:

1. Correct that tiny typo: mainling

2. Expand it a little to say something like:

"To join the documentation team and help our efforts, subscribe to one
or more of the mailing lists below. You do this simply by emailing a
message (any message)[*] to the list you're interested in.

[*] Is that true? Or are there some requirements? I guessed a subject
line of "subscribe and/or a body that included the word 'subscribe'.

Maybe just a link from that page to
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists which has more details,
as you asked for.

3. Perhaps add a PS to that page (or include in the Welcome email), a
note explaining the etiquette required for this ML.
Covering stuff like how to include (obfuscate?) email addresses in
messages, use or restriction on links to personal websites, as well as a
simple statement about respect and so forth.

(This occurred to me because I almost included a link to my blog in my
signature, then felt that doing so could well be out of place and seen
as self-promotion. IMHO Dave Barton's note just now about not changing
the subject line, to keep messages in a thread, would be a good example
of one of the etiquette rules.)

Regarding the sign-up process, which also contains the excellent advice
to browse the ML archives, on the three occasions I visited the link

http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.documentfoundation.libreoffice.documentation
over the course of a couple of hours, it always failed with an "Error
522 Connection timed out". (Ray ID: 4dc62aba5b3a942b • 2019-05-25
08:34:22 UTC)
Ditto just now, which is a couple of days after I first drafted this
message. From the error page:

Ah - I think GMANE gave up the ghost recently. Thanks for pointing that
out, I've asked the folks on the infrastructure IRC channel to look at that.

Best wishes,

Drew

Perfect - thanks, Drew.

luke