[Bf-docboard] About the last e-mails received in the bf-docboard list.

Mon Nov 15 02:46:32 CET 2010

Sure - I'm down for the first sunday of every month.  Might bring
things together a bit.

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Ivan Paulos Tomé <greylica at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi friends, how are you ?
>
> I'm Ivan Paulos Tomé - A.K.A. Greylica.
> After 2 years maintaining Brazilian Wiki project ( near complete ),
> I have learned lot's of lessons...
> OK, I tried to avoid a long mail, but some issues are inevitable,
> I cannot avoid bringing them up, so let's get to it.
>
> 1-) Documentation:
>
> All of us, no matter our native language/country, need access to (good)
> documentation for Blender. Our Blender Wiki is intended to bring the best
> information possible to users, but it's not guided towards "newbies". That
> is the cause we have been receiving complaints about the Wiki nowadays, just
> as in 2009, and 2008, and 2007... The same thing is always happening.
>
> Why this is happening almost every year ?
>
> I can tell you what's happening, because it's not us exclusively. No, it's
> not Blender Foundation, and it's not documenters/users fault. The same
> situation is happening to the entire Free/Open Software ecosystem, same for
> Gimp, Inkscape, same for OO, same for any Free Software !
>
> Users complain because they desperately seek for a magic solution. A
> quick-and-easy piece of information that will solve their problems. A
> miracle, to be exact. But there is no miracle here, no one will make a film
> in one day...
>
> ((It's the truth, even for me, 4 years using Blender, I will have to work
> everyday for a production, If I want to...))
>
> Sometimes people get ''brilliant'' ideas, and try to solve all of our
> problems with proposals that implement a non traditional way of learning
> Blender. Is it right to do so? Yes !!!
>
> But in every try, they discover that the real world is not so kind, users
> aren't so easy, and things sometimes don't work as expected. Until now, no
> one found an useful and complete solution for all of our (mostly related to
> "newbies") problems, but please, keep trying !
>
> A group of Brazilians for example, are starting to use BGE to teach Blender,
> why not ?
>
> The advantage over videos: You can translate and fix things...
>
> Let's talk about the REAL problem, including Andrew Price's presentation:
>
> What Andrew Price said in his presentation, is what we already knew years
> ago.
>
> But how do we solve it ?
>
> Before any ideas pop in this area, we need to address the "newbies" issue:
> often times, me, Luca, Jester, Terry, and some other ACTIVE documenters
> discussed them. Even Ton Rosendaal entered the discussions/conversations
> with us.
>
> Keep in mind that the ''User manual'' is not a ''Newbie manual'', and that
> was written in a way that tries to reach a hand over both worlds,
> experienced and non-experienced. But the "newbies" are always complaining:
>
> ''Huh, I read the entire Wiki page only to find out that the Faces that I
> was using had it's normals pointed in the wrong direction. Why wasn't it
> blinking in red, white and black in front of the Blender.org website ?''
> (and offer a cup of tea too ?)
>
> Do we have to express this problem in a more stressful situation ? No. We
> don't.
>
> (We already know the solution, but people are always complaining. Why aren't
> they documenting using the Blender Wiki Writers manual or guidelines? Why
> they insist in complaints whereas we need task force to guide?)
>
> Often times we receive certain e-mails and complaints in the list
> bf-docboard, offering the ''ultimate super ultra solution''. None of them
> offered real help, most of them never wrote a technical article, and most of
> them never wrote a single useful tutorial.
>
> Then again, they are offering video tutorials to solve our problem.
> Seriously ?
>
> We are giving our blood to the cause: we lack sleep sometimes; we sometimes
> stick 6 hours in front of a computer writing articles... and then, because
> we aren't delivering the expected miracle for newbies (for now), suddenly
> we're useless, archaic museum articles...
>
> So much fingers pointed at us, and mere 5~14 trully concerned about the
> quality of the information given to the readers. In fact, we are concerned
> about the Blender User Experience quality, and our ''User Manual'' is the
> result of hard study, consultancy of Blender Coders, conversations,
> approval, only to now be considered useless?
>
> Everything now is Video, video is modern! What then, shall we have to set
> fire on books ?
>
> No, videos are complimentary, what we need is to have the best of both
> worlds, and we have plans to write exclusively for newbies. It will solve
> their problems. We WILL give Blender to every human in the earth. I have no
> problem adding ''complimentary'' videos...
>
> The solution to the most urgent problem, (to finally solve the "newbies"
> issue) starts here:
>
> Can you help ?
>
> IRC #blenderwiki
>
> It's open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...
>
> I swear that I will do the best I can to help, as the same was done for me 2
> years ago.
>
> 2-) Documenters:
>
> Yes, I have ''chewed'' bad documenters, I didn't give them a third/fourth
> chance to use ''Google Translate'' and upload pages, I corrected errors,
> rolled back ''spam'' pages. All I am saying to everyone is that the coders
> do not deserve bad documenters, they are working hard to deliver Blender
> without a hiccup, why can't we work in the same spirit ?
>
> I am saying that I'm a Blender maintainer, I take care of this part of
> Blender, I'm responsible for the manuals, Brazilian Manual and Base
> (English).
>
> Expect me and my team ( it's being formed ) to be maintainers. Please, do
> not treat us as ''only writers'' or ''only translators'' → forget it, we are
> maintainers, we will be here 2014, 2020, 2030... Me, Samir, and Leandro will
> be here for 2.6x. Brazilians are coming, good documenters, good coders, good
> artists !
>
> We need maintainers for the documentation, it means people that are
> responsible for parts of the manual, we don't need ''documenters'' anymore
> (often times a Blender writer...), we need maintainers, I'm forming
> documenters that will be good maintainers, they deserve the same respect
> they are showing the entire Blender ecosystem.
>
> 3-) Translations :
>
> English only ?
>
> Someone told that Mont29 has spoken ideas to kill documentation in any other
> language, right ?
>
> It's very strange, because ''FR'', the French documentation (Sebastien is
> French) is complete...
>
> Brazilian (Portuguese) documentation is complete... (13 pages left )
>
> Chinese documentation is ongoing (have you seen the logs ? )...
>
> Kill their documentation, and you will have almost no documenters for
> English either.
>
> Let them working, and we'll have a task force to guide when needed. ;-)
>
> The idea behind translations, is that the involved persons are also capable
> of editing and
>
> writing pages. Look at my situation right now:
>
> I didn't say no to help with Base (English) documentation for 2.6x, and I
> wrote/translate 99% of the Brazilian wiki entirely alone, 2 years of hard
> work...
>
> Documenters converted to maintainers of their languages, will be responsible
> for FR, IT, PT, AR, RU, etc, etc. Good idea, don't you think ?
>
> On top of that, Brazilian usage of Blender after having a manual in
> portuguese is rising everyday. It's the first pillar for our future support
> infrastructure. We are doing our best to encourage them to use Blender, wich
> results in a Blender "ecosystem" growth. Personally, I don't want this
> process to stop.
>
> I will do my best to see Blender everywhere on earth, why not?
>
> Is there any specific reason (personal or not) to stop it here or in other
> countries ?
>
> I won't leave translations, even for complimentary videos, do you know how
> many countries do speak Portuguese ?
>
> There are 8 countries, and 3 territories...
>
> Narayan said:
>
> We can't plan with 3 people...
>
> My answer:
>
> Can you plan alone and make it happen ? Do it !
>
> For now, those three are making it happen right now...
>
> 4:) Sandbox :
>
> Censorship ? CENSORSHIP ?
>
> Someone's got a drug that humans aren't aware of...
>
> Archaic rules ?
>
> OK, My sandbox is empty. Do you know why ?
>
> That's because I didn't end the translation of BR Wiki, and because of this,
> I didn't take my new responsibility to write and maintain – The
> ''Constraints'' Section task of 2.4x was given to me to renewal. I will use
> my Sandbox, and I will use it a lot !
>
> Samir; our new Brazilian documenter, is using his Sandbox, ask him how many
> tips I gave him before placing the page in the appropriate local.
>
> There's no censorship here, when submitting a page for approval, I felt even
> more secure about my Job, Blender (ecosystem) deserves the best I can do !
> The judgement and approval of others does not cause any restriction to my
> liberty.
>
> 5:) Video Standards:
>
> OK, here I agree, the only thing good in all of this, it's the submission of
> videos using certain standards to boot. Even then, it's a complimentary
> thing, and we can add it into an specific section of every page. I agree to
> put videos in wiki. Can we define standards for it? ((Maybe a revision of
> the Style Guide is due?))
>
> We will only need the screenplay, and captions in txt, pdf, whatever so we
> can translate them!
>
> A question:
>
> Narayan said:
>
> - Videos will dominate life in the future...
>
> Well, stupid videos are dominating everything right now...
>
> Roger said:
>
> Videos are a simply an encapsulated manner of explaining things, and good
> videos sometimes are hard to find...
>
> Will the people that are insisting that videos will save Blender's
> documentation issues, please be completely responsible for their quality and
> join #blenderwiki channel?
>
> It's very easy to submit ideas. To be responsible for them, develop and
> maintain, now that's another story...
>
> (Ops, same issue again, we need more maintainers...)
>
> 6:) TOC changes.
>
> I saw strong efforts to make it happen, I don't know the state of the thing
> right now, but I have plenty of confidence in Luca, Jester and the rest of
> the Team.
>
> Once again: Ideas >working sample< Implementation.
>
> 7:) Editing anything at any time, with any IP address.
>
> The wiki is a big book, I have to read the BR logs everyday to see if any
> wrong changes occurred, and the Doc:BR and Doc: wiki is simply... Giant !!!
>
> Wrong changes take place almost everyday. I've found lot's of ''Hello word
> !'' in Brazilian Pages as well. In the beginning, it was hard to explain for
> Brazilian newcomers of Wiki (sometimes I'm recruiting people to train, in
> order to be become mantainers), that they need their hard work constantly
> looked after. Some of them say that this is a very insecure way to construct
> a big work, and leave as it is believing it's ok. It's hard for me sometimes
> too, but I will continue observing it everyday. Any act of vandalism will be
> reported/rolled back. But I confess, I'd prefer to see only registered users
> editing wiki. It's better to know the e-mail of the registered users, and
> try to orient them as well ( I won't admit vandalism of any kind ). The
> information in our Blender Wiki is an image of our Blender efforts. The
> software is serious/organized (I believe in Blender). Free software doesn't
> mean disorganized software/infrastructure/ecosystem, and we are already far
> better than this.
>
> I know that this open situation is an incentive for users to enrich the
> texts inside wiki, but in fact only a handfull of serious Blender users,
> maintainers and coders are using their freedom to do it right. And they are
> always registering themselves in wiki prior to editing, it's a proof of
> their respect.
>
> We HAVE to delete users like 111111111111111111111.1, 111111.2, etc... They
> aren't serious.
>
> 8:) Meetings! - First Sunday of every Month:
>
> Let's do it !
>
> Even if you can find me each and every day in the IRC wiki channel
> (#blenderwiki), I won't miss it. Let Luca (mindrones), or Nathan Letwory
> (Jesterking) tell us what's best for them, (best moment of the day, issues,
> etc), and I will be there.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thank you all for reading, I appologise for the long mail again, thank you
> all for the freedom to manifest my opinion.
>
> Now I'm getting back to the work, there are 2 new maintainers to train, 13
> pages to end BR wiki, and in 8 feb 2011, I'm all for 2.6x series, body and
> soul !
>
> Cheers !
>
> Greylica – My Brain is Grey like yours !
>
> Ivan Paulos Tomé,
>
> BR Wiki Maintainer.
>
> --
> Drogas são coisas que não se pode nem se deve compartilhar.
> Que tal compartilhar Linux ?
>
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>
>

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