ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Pierre Slamich <pierre.slamich@xxxxxxxxx>]

My 2 cents as a French Translations Coordinator and a translator and
proofreader for the French version.

- I don't think the Ubuntu Manual should be disbanded. The Manual is
perceived as a valuable asset in the French Community (and most likely
elsewhere). We're the only ones able to be able to produce (that is write,
update, translate and proofread) a printed book in time for the Ubuntu
Party (at least until this cycle). That much that when we didn't deliver on
time, people were surprised, and a guy from the French community is somehow
trying to create his own version and get it out.
- I think before asking us to "pool resources" (which has been repeated too
many times in that IRC log, just like a magical word), they should question
the reason why they have a contributor problem. There's contributor churn
(either for personal or demotivation reasons), and also the ability to
onboard newcomers in an active way, which is very demanding.
- What ressources economies would actually be created ? What are the Ubuntu
Docs' assets ? In my sense, that looks like a resource- and brain- drain,
that could actually destroy value overall (e.g. destroying the manual,
without actually reviving the docs team in the long run)
- The wiki pages are obsolete, and not designed to be translated. Our
manual is designed to be up to date (or not published at all) and
translated.
- The Desktop Docs cannot "fail" as clearly as the Ubuntu Manual since UM
has a much tighter Q&A process (either 1 book proofread and published, or
0).
- Finally the team, and Hannie, Kevin, Patrick, Sylvie is doing tremendous
and hard work, and it is what motivates me to kick my ass to get a
translation out for each release, before the Ubuntu Party, and before all
other teams (Germany might win the world cup, but we still have an edge on
translations <3 )

sincerely,
Pierre

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 9:50 PM, Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I just wanted to jump in and clarify a couple things:
>
> 1. The desktop documentation that I mentioned is what you see if you
> search for 'help' in the Dash. It's also available online at
> <https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/ubuntu-help/index.html>.
>
> 2. The Ubuntu docs team has very few active members. Toward the
> beginning of 2013, the last remaining active docs team member raised
> the alarm about this problem before leaving the team. Since then, a
> few people have joined the team to try to revive the docs team. This
> past cycle there were perhaps half a dozen active members of the docs
> team working on the various products.
>
> The Ubuntu docs team is responsible for the following:
>
> (a) The desktop documentation (linked to above). Much of this
> documentation has been imported from the GNOME project in the past.
> However, with the more recent Unity/GNOME split, Ubuntu documentation
> has been diverging more and more from the stock GNOME documentation.
> This means the Ubuntu docs team has had to write a lot more
> Ubuntu-specific documentation than they did in the past.
>
> (b) The server guide (available at
> <https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/index.html>). A couple
> members of the Ubuntu docs team oversee the server guide.
>
> (c) The community help wiki (at <https://help.ubuntu.com/community>)
> is edited by some members of the Ubuntu docs team, but the docs team
> is not responsible for the content of the wiki. The wiki admins only
> help with gardening tasks such as tagging pages, combining like pages,
> setting up appropriate redirections, etc. The content of the wiki is
> written and maintained by the entire Ubuntu community.
>
> 3. The docs team doesn't have any more insight into upcoming changes
> than the manual team does. I think this is one area where it would be
> especially constructive to pool our resources and share our knowledge.
>
> 4. The reasons some members of the docs team proposed shutting down
> the manual project is because they think that people who are working
> on the manual project would work on the desktop docs if the manual
> project didn't exist. The Ubuntu docs team is trying to find more
> people to help work on their documentation.
>
> —Kevin
>
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