[Qgis-community-team] Draft paper discussing QGIS docs

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi again,

Another observation I have is that there is an awful lot of 
documentation about QGIS out their on the web, spread into many personal 
blog websites, company blog posts and news sites, youtube movies, social 
media posts, etc. etc. However, all of this vast and de-centralized 
information doesn't end up in our central documentation.

My assumption is that people prefer to add such information more to 
their own, personal website, rather than to QGIS.OR because it helps 
them to:

  * build personal reputation (individual persons). I think about people
    like Anita Graser, Klas Karlsson, and probably many others who
    always add the new cool stuff to their own websites, but not to QGIS.ORG
  * show off what cool features the company added recently to QGIS core
    (which helps their business) - examples are companies like OpenGIS,
    Oslandia, etc. who add new cool stuff to their company website, but
    not to QGIS.ORG
  * better  learn and understand how QGIS works (which is useful for
    building up their skills). I heard from Harrissou that this was his
    main motivation to contribute to the centralized QGIS documentation.

 From these above three different motivations, only the last one can be 
fulfilled by adding new information to our centralized documentation, 
the other two are better done outside of the centralized documentation.

So I wonder if the huge work of documentors in the centralized 
documentation could be better credited/attributed to individuals, so 
that the other two motivations of gaining personal or company reputation 
by contributing to the centralized QGIS documentation is better fulfilled?

Just some thoughts ...

Andreas

Am 26.08.19 um 15:10 schrieb Andreas Neumann:
> Hi Cameron,
>
> Thank you for summarizing your observations and assessment on the 
> current state of documentation in QGIS.
>
> I agree that the documentation task seems to be overwhelming and might 
> also be daunting for newcomers, volunteers and even paid people. I 
> also agree that the team is under-resourced.
>
> However, we already knew this before your assessment.
>
> So I wonder if you could add your thoughts and recommendations on how 
> to improve our situation? We already know about our misery and bad 
> state, but it would be encouraging to hear more suggestions for how to 
> improve the situation. This would be really valuable for us.
>
> It is not primarily a problem of finding financial resources. Every 
> year we assigned funds for documentation and in most years those funds 
> haven't been used. Even if we would make more funds available to the 
> team, I feel this wouldn't solve the problems the team is facing.
>
> Should the team focus on smaller chunks/goals in order to have better 
> progress and a better success feeling?
>
> Are the tools to complicated?
>
> Is there not enough information provided by developers or 
> organizations who fund a new features?
>
> Thanks again for adding more suggestions and advice to your document - 
> this would help us much more than just the assessment of the current 
> state.
>
> Andreas
>
> Am 26.08.19 um 14:35 schrieb Cameron Shorter:
>> For those involved in QGIS docs,
>>
>> After a bit of brainstorming with Matteo about what next for QGIS 
>> docs, I offered to put some ideas down into an article to give him 
>> something tangible to take to the QGIS Project Steering Committee 
>> next week.
>>
>> I feel my thoughts have room to be developed a bit and I'd be keen to 
>> hear feedback on them before I copy to my blog at the end of this week.
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/11N5d1aBgkdQ80I7RKBlt_jx9Uk1RGsvOTeq_TSFeljA/edit# 
>>
>>
>> Comments are preferred to track changes (which become hard to 
>> manage). If you comment, please log in first so I know who said what.
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-community-team mailing list for organizing community resources 
> such as documentation, translation etc..
> Qgis-community-team at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-community-team
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-community-team/attachments/20190826/ad0456e9/attachment.html>