[SeasonOfDocs] Geonetwork call notes and actions

[Jo Cook]

Hi All,

We had a very productive call to kick off work on the Geonetwork Season of
Docs initiative today- thanks to all who attended. Here are my notes and
the actions I captured:

Present:
Jo, Cameron, Maria, Paul, Byron

Notes:

1) We need a way for users to informally comment on the existing
documentation, where a github issue is maybe not the best method, or to
allow people who are not comfortable with github to contribute. We also
have a need for people with little or no programming experience to review
the Quick Start guide, to ensure it is complete, accessible, and does what
it's supposed to. For the qgis project, a google doc version of the
documentation has been useful, which people can then add comments to.

Actions:
* Jo to create google docs version of the quick start guide, add it to the
season of docs wiki, and circulate for comment.
* All- publicize this to get as much feedback as possible

2) We need to review the current documentation to quickly flag up areas
that are incomplete, missing, or outdated. This seems like a big task, but
if the documentation is broken down to it's sub-heading level, and
different people take different sections, it should be manageable. Problems
should be submitted as github issues.

Actions:
* Byron to create spreadsheet of documentation headings (to sub-heading
level, eg User Guide | Harvesting would be one entry), add a link to it
from the Season of Docs wiki and share it widely.
* All- share it widely to ensure we cover all elements

3) Is there a way that we can add a comment option in sphinx for ongoing
informal capturing of feedback after this initiative finishes? The problem
with feedback is finding somewhere for the messages to go to. Note that
after the call, I found an option to embed disqus comment forms in sphinx (
https://pypi.org/project/sphinxcontrib-disqus/) which is not ideal but
might be a way forward.

4) Areas requiring a lot of attention are schema plugins and layout
customisation. Hopefully this should be improved as part of the
documentation review above.

5) How can we ensure that new features, or Pull Requests that relate to a
big interface or usage change are flagged up at the time? For example,
looking at the changelog for 3.6.0 (
https://geonetwork-opensource.org/manuals/trunk/en/overview/change-log/version-3.6.0.html)
there are some new features that should be documented. We don't want this
to add to the burden of the developers, so how can we minimise the work for
them?

Actions:
* Jo volunteers to review the changelog for new releases to flag up what
needs documenting.
* Paul to ask the rest of the developers how we can best ensure new
features are flagged up and documented.

6) Are there any user guides for specific (customised) portals that we
could use for examples and for improving the generic user guide?

Actions:
* Jo to send link to Scottish Spatial Data Infrastructure
* All- any other examples?

++++++++++++++++++++++

I think those are the key points and actions- correct me if I'm wrong!
We're hoping to make this a regular fortnightly call at this time, people
can dip in and out as they wish.

Thanks again to everyone that attended

Jo

-- 
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http://about.me/jocook
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