[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[Roger Wickes]

Hi everyone. Out of a sense of wanting to give something back and my own
personal frustration at re-discovering features/workflow, about five years ago 
now, I took on the task of writing a few pages for the wiki user manual. Well, 
I got addicted and I could not stop. Over the next two years, I pretty much 
touched everything. I am largely responsible for the english 2.49 content and 
structure as it is today. As such I guess I am a leader in the area, and I 
feel i need to comment on the state. 

Why me and then? Well, I was getting into using Blender professionally, and 
loved it. So I worked 8 hours during the day using Blender and then about 2 
hours each night documenting it. The wiki engine was fun to use and the layout 
and markup was easy to use and gave great results. I also had no idea what I 
was getting into, and just took it one page at a time. 

If you had asked me to write the whole thing, some 200+ pages, I would have 
said no way.  So whatever we do, we cannot overwhelm people. We need to break 
it down to small, isolated, easily accomplished goals. So we need to define 
"it" and then a plan with tasks and assignments that people can do.

First, I second the need for Ton to put some brainpower and thought and 
establish a direction and plan for the undertaking. I will be glad to help 
with planning, as I am also dissatisifed with the state of training materials, 
which is something I am officially responsible for. I would like to, but I 
have no power or authority to do so. Ton does.

The plan we need is a Knowledge Management Plan. What we are talking about is 
how to convey knowledge on the use (end user) and construction (programming) 
of Blender. There are many ways and means to do so. The plan needs to be 
comprehensive, to include all documentation, whether it is hosted on the 
blender.org servers or on some other server. It needs to encompass all forms 
of knowledge, whether written or verbal (video). The docs need to encompass 
all technology used (wiki pages, html, asp, xml, .blend files, powerpoints,  
textures/images, video, whatever). It needs to address the web 2.0, the web as 
a web of knowledge points, and a way to manage those connections. Obviously, I 
am a big wiki hosting fan, since I know that a page written in the wiki will 
be there forever; external sites come and go like the wind, and in the past, 
linking to anything outside the blender.org servers has been a waste of time. 

That was five years ago. We now have reliable alternative hosting sites, like 
YouTube, and Google. Not sure about Vimeo Hulu, and many others. We need to 
use them and evaluate which content we want to host ourselves, versus which 
can be safely outsourced. 

The plan must address incentives, which has been validly noted in the 
blenderguru rants. 

The plan must address redundancy; where we want it and why. Imho, the typo3 
CMS sucks as a tutorials linking site hosting engine. It doesnt fit what we 
need. It is also redundant with the wiki. The way I solved the Tutorials 
problem with the wiki is to create two pages.
 http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials is hosted content, CC 
license, and is "owned" by BF.  The communitiy contributes the content there, 
and I think it should be the hub for people to go to for tutorials. 

But, there is ls also a profit incentive for people to create tutorials and 
sell them elsewhere and that's fine. For those, I created 
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Resources/External_links

When people say wiki, I think they really mean just the wiki User Manual, but 
the wiki is much much larger than that, and it includes Tutorials and should 
include Education. The wiki is  a great container for knowledge. 

The plan needs to address languages. The wiki approach is that the english 
version is generally the leader in being first, and then other language 
authors should be able to be notified of new pages, or changes to a 
corresponding english page to prompte them to maybe revise their 
correstponding non-english page.

Lastly, there are great books in print. We have a complete set of books for 
249 that cover every aspect of blender. That should be represented somewhere, 
regardless of who sells them or who published them. Books are a great way to 
convey knowledge. 

Ton had the idea of knowledge strata, which is good, and we need to address 
knowledge at the beginner, intermediate, and specialized levels. e.g. beginner 
box modeling versus beveling edges versus modeling an architectural element, 
or best practices for edge loops in a human face. 

Just some random thoughts. Thanks for listening, hopefully.
--Roger