Kernon, naturally the documentation should be neutral (unbiased). <br><br>The following simple rules will be sufficient-<br>1. Except for names in the beginning, a video shall not have any reference to any websites<br>2. No reference to self (names/URLs/email ID) in text <br>
3. No reference to self in images or videos (voice, watermark, background, etc.)<br>4. All material contriibuted will be covered under <b>creative commons license</b>: <br> Contributors will have no right on the material they contribute. <br>
<br><b>Wikipedia </b>avoids the very same issues, and on a much larger scale.<br>Why can't we?<br><br>Note that the current website already allows direct links to external tutorials.<br>The more the links, the better "self-promotion" anyone gets.<br>
<br>Also note that such links alone will raise the other site's ranking in all search engines (Google/Yahoo/Bing).<br><br>Note also that you can't do anything if someone puts his own link at Wikipedia's <i>Blender page</i> in "external references" section (at bottom). That too would be a huge self-promotion.<br>
<br>So let us put aside these petty considerations and work together on this.<br><br>****<br><b>Coming back to documentation:</b><br><br>Sadly I do not see any leadership in this area at all.<br><br>There are so many areas to decide, but there is no <u>visible</u> action.<br>
People are BANNED from editing the current version.<br><br>Can this get worse?<br><br><b>I think Ton needs to step out and give us a strategic plan on the following:</b><br><ol><li>What would be the new structure of the documentation</li>
<ul><li>Review the lesson plan <br>(Already <b>Mont29</b> has proposed a new plan, but there's no progress on that)<br></li><li>Review the fact that the entire website is split vertically in three parts: <br>Theory, User Manual, Tutorials. (I love this, but some people don't)<br>
</li><li>Review the style of the writing</li></ul><li>Assemble a task-force with managers/coordinators.</li><ul><li>What types of volunteers are needed?<br>Writers, illustrators, Video tutorial-makers, artists to make a special gallery, <br>
group-leaders for each category, editors, proofreaders,</li><li>Translators (both for text and video voiceover)</li></ul><li>What would be the strategy regarding making of an <b>offline pdf manual</b>?</li><ul><li>Extensions can export pdf and odt (openoffice document, which allows further formatting)<br>
</li><li>PDFs can be exported in two different versions- (a) Printing and (b) offline browsing.<br>Printing version converts all links to footnotes, so that the reader can go to that page.<br>Offline reading version retains the link (click to jump to the target page).<br>
I recommend to go for both. (Let the user select what he wants)</li><li>BF should tie up with pediaprint for revenue-sharing for on-demand-printed books.</li><li>Some python files need to be tweaked for these extensions.<br>
Some volunteers are needed to work on this.</li></ul><li>We see a Blender timeline at Blender site. Where is the wiki+offline manual in it?</li></ol><b>Who is going to throw the gates open?</b><div style="visibility: hidden; display: inline;" id="avg_ls_inline_popup">
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