[Qgis-community-team] Giving credits to documentation authors [Was: Books section on our website]

[Otto Dassau]

Am Wed, 14 Oct 2015 07:37:01 +0200
schrieb Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:

> Il 14/10/2015 01:55, Alexandre Neto ha scritto:
> 
> > I believe the answer to your original question, "why it seems to be
> > attractive to write about QGIS there (in books) and not within the
> > project (oficial doxumentation)?", is given by the early testimony.
> > Writting good updated documentation takes lots of time, effort and
> > patience,  things that people don't seem to be willing to give for free
> > (at least not the desirable quantity).
> > 
> > While adding ad hoc non sponsored new features are fun and give their
> > authors some prestige and recognition, Writting documentation doesn't.
> 
> I think money is not really an issue here: compensation for writing
> books is usually ridiculous, and not worth the effort. Want people wants
> is recognition: having your name in print, on a book thousands of people
> read, is the driving force.
> Unfortunately this is difficult to achieve for a cooperative effort, but
> perhaps we should giving due and appropriate credits to authors more
> clearly (maybe a page with names and statistics: number of lines
> written, number of commits?). I'm sure this may motivate some people.
> All the best.

I also thought that money is most important. But it seems to be only a
(minor) factor. Giving people recognition seems to be very important, too.
I agree with Paolo and maybe we can improve that.

Another thing I thought about is, if writing the official documentation in
QGIS is still too complicated? We tried to make it as simple as possible,
but I am not sure, if it is easy enough. Maybe not explained good enough?

Regards,
Otto