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

Mon Aug 26 06:10:11 PDT 2019

Hi Régis,

Thanks for your thoughts.

I hope I did not give the impression that I dislike that people are 
blogging about new QGIS features on their own personal blogs or company 
websites. This was not my intention.

But I wonder what prevents those people companies from ALSO contributing 
this valuable information, next to their own personal websites, to 
QGIS.ORG? Is the process or are the tools too complicated? I mean - if 
you spend 1-2 days about preparing and writing on your own blog post. 
Why not also spending the extra 1-2 hours for copy/pasting this same 
information also to the centralized QGIS.ORG documentation?

I think there is really nothing wrong about building up personal 
reputation. I think it is a good thing and one of the main drivers 
behind Open Source.

But it would be good if the QGIS.ORG could also benefit from this 
tremendous work these people do.

Awards are maybe a good idea to honor the work of such people or 
mentions in annual reports, at conferences, etc.

Greetings,
Andreas

Am 26.08.19 um 16:02 schrieb Régis Haubourg:
> Hi all,
> just a quick reaction to that long standing issue,
>
> Le lun. 26 août 2019 à 14:42, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net 
> <mailto:a.neumann at carto.net>> a écrit :
>
>     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.
>
> Agreed!
>
>     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 <http://QGIS.ORG>
>
> Agreed, myself included at a small scale
>
>      *
>
>
>       * 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 <http://QGIS.ORG>
>
> Well, concerning Oslandia, we have been trying to systematically 
> document in the doc the newly created features, and blog posts are a 
> complement. We might have missed some, but that's the idea. In fact, 
> not all customers accept the very high costs of the full quality 
> package "feature + review + doc" . We've already been discussing this 
> on the list some times and I remember opinions are mixed here. 
> Personaly, I would vote for making minimal doc PR along with the 
> feature PR the default behavior, with possible exemptions.  (hum, make 
> me think that we merged a PR this morning without documenting it, 
> let's do that )
>
>
>       * 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?
>
> Not an easy task, but we at last have github statistics. Maybe 
> blogging each year about QGIS project status, and mentionning the 
> special efforts made by active contributors during the past year. Why 
> not going towards some kind of reward, just like OSGEO has the 
> Sol-Katz ? Just random thoughts too.
>
>     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.
>>>
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