ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Jim Connett <jimandmarcy@xxxxxxxxx>]

I, too, wish to add my congrats and thanks to everyone for their hard work
on the release of the Raring manual. It's really wonderful to see a team so
diverse in skills and localities come together to accomplish a task.

As I am wont to do, I've thought about the positives and negatives of this
iteration of the manual. Each manual presents its own surprises and its own
unique set of "emergencies". Of course, my desire is that we capitalize on
the positives and find ways to learn from the negatives.

*Positives
*
o Good communication between leads and all involved with regards to due
dates and assignments.
o Well-developed and tested "help" documents released to aid in
installation (tex) and version tracking (bazaar)
o A good foundation for the document has been created, allowing us to
reduce our focus on the general information and focus more on the specific
changes introduced with each iteration.

*Negatives
*
x Not nearly enough authors.
x Editing was a challenge this iteration as some authors missed the
deadline.
x Too many changes in what was finally released in 13.04 that kept us
scrambling up to the last second (Gwibber).
x Screenshots seemed to be a bit of an unexpected issue this time around.

*Recommendations
*
! There should be a meeting one week before the due date for authors (and
editors if they wish) to gain an assessment of where authors are at in the
process...reassign sections if needed, etc. I don't think it works very
well to have an authors/editors meeting 1/2 way through the editing
process. I think it's better to have these as separate connection points.
! More communication is needed when calls-for-authors and calls-for-editors
are made. I remember only seeing one "call" on the 300-or-so RSS feeds I
follow. Calls for authors/editors should be done 3-5 times...up to two
weeks before the author deadline. In fact, I would even go so far as to
recommend we start getting authors/editors lined up now for Saucy.  It
appears the Ubuntu Documentation Project is hurting (very badly) for
authors/editors, and they've already put the word out for assistance...this
means the pool of potential volunteers may become more limited.
! Shave one week off of the author due date and give 3 weeks for editing.
We have all this time to write, but a very narrow window to edit/rewrite as
needed.  If our goal now is to always release the new manual with the
release of the new version of Ubuntu, I believe editors need just a little
more time to do their job.
! Re-instate the screenshot team. Screenshots should be uniform across the
entire manual. Having everyone do their own screenshot...even when using
the default theme, tends to produce ever-so-slightly different results. I
would estimate it would take two people about 4 hours each at the end of
the editing phase to do all the screenshots. (As a side-note...I do not
think screenshots should be in the margin! If the concept is important
enough to have a screenshot, it should be in the main section of the
document.)

So...that's my perspective. take it or leave it.  Again, great job
everyone! I'm looking forward to getting started on the next iteration in a
few months!

--Jim


**


On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Mehmet Kani <m.kani@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Dear all,
>
> Thank you all for all the support during the authoring stage. Look
> forward to the next project.
>
> Happy days.
>
> Warm regards
>
> Mehmet
>  --
> Mehmet Kani
>
> m.kani@xxxxxxx
>
>  [image: View Mehmet Kani's profile on LinkedIn]
> <http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mehmetkani>
>
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