[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[Raindrops From Sky]

Kernon, naturally the documentation should be neutral (unbiased).

The following simple rules will be sufficient-
1. Except for names in the beginning, a video shall not have any reference
to any websites
2. No reference to self (names/URLs/email ID) in text
3. No reference to self in images or videos (voice, watermark, background,
etc.)
4. All material contriibuted will be covered under *creative commons license
*:
    Contributors will have no right on the material they contribute.

*Wikipedia *avoids the very same issues, and on a much larger scale.
Why can't we?

Note that the current website already allows direct links to external
tutorials.
The more the links, the better "self-promotion" anyone gets.

Also note that such links alone will raise the other site's ranking in all
search engines (Google/Yahoo/Bing).

Note also that you can't do anything if someone puts his own link at
Wikipedia's *Blender page* in "external references" section (at bottom).
That too would be a huge self-promotion.

So let us put aside these petty considerations and work together on this.

****
*Coming back to documentation:*

Sadly I do not see any leadership in this area at all.

There are so many areas to decide, but there is no *visible* action.
People are BANNED from editing the current version.

Can this get worse?

*I think Ton needs to step out and give us a strategic plan on the
following:*

   1. What would be the new structure of the documentation
      - Review the lesson plan
      (Already *Mont29* has proposed a new plan, but there's no progress on
      that)
      - Review the fact that the entire website is split vertically in three
      parts:
      Theory, User Manual, Tutorials. (I love this, but some people don't)
      - Review the style of the writing
   2. Assemble a task-force with managers/coordinators.
      - What types of volunteers are needed?
      Writers, illustrators, Video tutorial-makers, artists to make a
      special gallery,
      group-leaders for each category, editors, proofreaders,
      - Translators (both for text and video voiceover)
   3. What would be the strategy regarding making of an *offline pdf manual*
   ?
      - Extensions can export pdf and odt (openoffice document, which allows
      further formatting)
      - PDFs can be exported in two different versions- (a) Printing and (b)
      offline browsing.
      Printing version converts all links to footnotes, so that the reader
      can go to that page.
      Offline reading version retains the link (click to jump to the target
      page).
      I recommend to go for both. (Let the user select what he wants)
      - BF should tie up with pediaprint for revenue-sharing for
      on-demand-printed books.
      - Some python files need to be tweaked for these extensions.
      Some volunteers are needed to work on this.
   4. We see a Blender timeline at Blender site. Where is the wiki+offline
   manual in it?

*Who is going to throw the gates open?*
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