openstack-doc-core team mailing list archive

[Anne Gentle <anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Absolutely, though part of the problem with the "one Answers site per
project" model is that it's tougher to monitor and browse. Ideally
we'll consolidate to one "support site" eventually. I know I've seen
Lorin answer questions on Stack Overflow which is great. I truly
believe that documentation and support are strongest when interlinked.

Not to brag, but I wrote a book [1] about the techniques of learning
about your users through the many "social" aspects of the web, and
this technique of culling and curating information from multiple sites
is right on. I'm presenting at TCANZ Conference [2] in New Zealand in
October, perhaps your academic friends would be interested! :)

Thanks,
Anne

[1] http://justwriteclick.com/book
[2] http://www.tcanz.org.nz/Events/TCANZ+Conference+2012.html

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 12:46 AM, Tom Fifield <fifieldt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Indeed an interesting read - thanks for the forward.
>
> I was chatting with a humanities academic last night about related topics
> and she noted a number of trends in the teaching space that follow similar
> patterns. Her university in particular is moving entirely away from
> lecturers making content, and instead deriving the  curriculum from what can
> be found/done online*!
>
> Pragmatically - I'd ask, right now is anyone going through the responded-to
> questions on the launchpad answers site and using those to improve the docs?
> Would that be a worthwhile experiment to see just how much extra information
> the community is producing that we're 'missing' in our set of
> "authoritative" manuals ?
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom
>
> * Their marketing department extols the virtues here using the "in the
> cloud" moniker, of course.
>
>
>
> On 05/31/2012 06:45 AM, Anne Gentle wrote:
>>
>> This is an excellent paper... I wanted to share with you all.
>> http://blog.ninlabs.com/2012/05/crowd-documentation/
>>
>> Quite a find for its relevance to OpenStack APIs! They studied Android,
>> GWT, and
>> the Java programming language. In their words "a large established
>> API, a new and specialized API, and a less active API. The questions
>> they studied:
>>
>> RQ1. Can we rely on the crowd to discuss an entire API on Stack
>> OverFlow? (not the entire but a good portion)
>> RQ1.1 Are APIs widely covered?
>> RQ1.2 What is discussed and what is not dis-
>> cussed? Are those API elements infre-
>> quently discussed also infrequently used in
>> practice?
>> RQ1.3 How fast is the crowd at covering an
>> entire API?
>>
>> RQ2. What are the dynamics of a successful API community on Stack
>> OverFlow?
>> RQ2.1 Who contributes?
>> RQ2.2 How does the crowd contribute?
>> RQ2.3 How many code samples does the crowd
>> provide?
>>
>> Conclusion:
>> We have shown several sources of evidence that crowd
>> documentation exists as a viable process that can emerge
>> from social media sites, such as Stack OverFlow, for creating
>> software documentation. Documentation can emerge in
>> the form of questions and answers that feature many code
>> examples and discussions about using API classes and meth-
>> ods. The authors that contribute these items take distinct
>> roles in curating and maintaining the quality of questions
>> and answers.
>>
>> I don't have other conclusions for OpenStack APIs but want to study
>> their paper further and the tool they made. This is highly relevant
>> research though.
>>
>> Anne
>>
>