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

[DelazJ]

Hi,

A lot has been said, there are topics within the topic and I would like to
reply to each that I couldn't.
Thanks Cameron to raise (again) this issue we all know already. But it's
sometimes good to hear things from people outside (though you are not
really outside). As I said in the GDocs, imho it's unfortunate to not
assign a senior writer to QGIS. I was personally envisioning that as a
catalyzer, an opportunity to trigger mobilisation of the writing community,
and teach us actual and best practices. And maybe that experience would
confirm us that we need that profile you seem to propose in later message.
Anyways... we'll try to keep Jared around, if he agrees of course.

Le jeu. 29 août 2019 à 08:24, Tim Sutton <tim at kartoza.com> a écrit :

> Hi
>
> I have a different opinion on this. Based on our experience of paying
> developers I don’t think it has in any way reduced the volunteer
> contributions to the code base - on the contrary it  probably has
> incentivised those that we paid to donate lots more of their time. I am
> pretty sure that we will have similar experience in other areas of the
> project. I am more bullish on documentation and thank that we should work
> enthusiastically to get one or more dedicated, full time document writers
> in the QGIS project….over and over we here it is the most wanting part of
> the project. The biggest problem we have is that we need a better platform
> for authoring and managing the docs so that you dont first need a degree in
> rocket science before you can participate :-P
>
> As far as I can tell, all you need is a web browser and a github account.
It's enough to address some of the "Easy" tagged issues [0] we identify for
beginners. You don't even need to browse the repository files, we have
links in page footer that directly open the right source file. But given
that I regularly read people mentioning that the workflow is the problem, I
wonder How big is that? Do we have any metrics (or reports) that this is
what discourages people from contributing. I'm used to it so I'm probably
blind and not the right person to evaluate but I'd like to hear what are
the actual features that are problematic.
We've written a step-by-step contribution doc for beginners years ago [1]
and try to improve it over the years. Maybe it's not clear enough or it's
not just enough or nobody is aware of it (other than Australian of course,
Andrew) but without feedback, it's hard to know what people want.

I remember years ago, Tim on behalf of the PSC made a call for doc
contributions [2]. No git, no github, no rst, simply provide a .txt (or
whatever you are used to) file that addresses a doc issue. So clearly, no
degree required. We got, from memories, no more than two reports though I
only can find one [3].
I don't know where the issue resides given all the options we all have
already tried.

> I suggest working out a budget for this, to check how feasible this
> solution can be, before taking further steps.
> Another radically different solution would be to embrace the chaotic
> approach, and leave the user browsing the thousands of web resources to
> get help, and keep official documentation to an absolute bare minimum
> that we can effectively managed by the core team. I'm not a fan of this
> solution, but it what is currently happening.
>
>
> Yeah! This is why I suggested months ago that we made a "User question of
the month" on where/how people learn QGIS features and whether they know
about and use our docs. It does not make sense to invest in something
nobody uses, right? Unfortunately, we did not make it. Maybe should we.

I'm glad to confirm there are a lot of people concerned by the docs status
and I wish we find tangible actions that revitalize QGIS docs (if it's what
the project and the community need). Thanks Cameron. But I must also
confess that I'm jealous of this thread and disappointed I got no reply to
my less-than-a-week wishlist message [4] that intended to help QGIS Docs
**actual writers**.

[0]
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AEasy
[1]
https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/documentation_guidelines/first_contribution.html
[2]
http://blog.qgis.org/2017/12/04/documentation-for-qgis-3-0-call-for-contributions/
[3]
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3AEasy+label%3A%22Prose+Proposed%22+is%3Aclosed
[4]
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Qgis-community-team-Documentation-wish-list-for-quot-hackfesters-quot-td5413960.html

Regards,
Harrissou

>
> Yeah me too as mentioned above.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
>
> Cheers.
> --
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS.ORG Chair:
> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> —
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Tim Sutton*
>
> *Co-founder:* Kartoza
> *Ex Project chair:* QGIS.org
>
> Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:
>
> Desktop GIS programming services
> Geospatial web development
> GIS Training
> Consulting Services
>
> *Skype*: timlinux
> *IRC:* timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
>
> I'd love to connect. Here's my calendar link
> <https://calendly.com/timlinux> to make finding time easy.
>
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