[Bf-docboard] Blender Proceedings

[mindrones]

Hi "Raindrops From Sky" (do you have a rela name btw? :),

I'm a bit out of time, so I can't answer to each points you raise in 
other mails but I'll try to answer to ones I perceive as important.


On 11/11/2010 07:38 PM, Raindrops From Sky wrote:
 > Has the wiki documentation project got any impetus as a result of the
 > Blender Conference?

I hope so, many things has been discussed and I think it's Ton's turn to 
take action, but I have no idea about the timings.


 > IMHO Andrew Price certainly made a brilliant presentation, highlighting
 > the need for good documentation.


Talking about Andrew, I think he taped the discussion and he told me he 
wanted to publish it after editing it.

If that doesnt happen, maybe someone (Ton?) might ask him to send the 
tape and I could put it online, or so.

I have not much time to prepare a report on that right now.



On 11/12/2010 03:13 AM, Raindrops From Sky wrote:

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

reading your mails I feel you're not much aware of what happens in wiki 
(no offense, but maybe this is because you're not that involved in wiki 
writing/maintaining).

As an explicit (I hope also useful) provocation, I wonder:

- are you aware of the resources we have for real? in the wiki channel 
we are usually not more than 5/6 people and a couple are just lurkers...

- do you know the effort that has been done to maintain templates and 
clean pages from crap? that has been done mainly by people on the wiki 
channel, like Terry Wallwork, Mike Belanger, me, others

- do you know that the current structure has taken 2 years of daily 
(hard) work to setup? and that it has been done after a lengthy 
proposal, discussed publicly here and on coders mailing list in early 2009?

- do you have any idea of the current state the reference is in?

- also, are you aware that the current structure has been chosen because 
it's easy to do some automatism that would be otherwise impossible?
   wikipedia has to be flat by nature, a manual should NOT be flat, or 
at least not if you have categories we have today (read: "super messy")

- are you aware of the caching problems wiki has today? THAT is a big 
problem IMO and can't be solved because the server maintainer hasn't got 
the time to dedicate on this matter

- are you aware of the work that has been done on the wiki skin?

- do you know who is maintaining translations and the current state of 
traslations?

- do you know wiki guidelines? in your opinion, what's wrong with 
starting with a sandbox page and let other peers review it? maybe you 
have a better workflow to suggest?

- etcetera, etcetera (and etcetera :P )


> There are so many areas to decide, but there is no _visible_ action.


The list could go on and on (and on :P), but please don't assume that no 
one is doing hard work just because you can't see it :)


> People are BANNED from editing the current version.


Who's being banned?

I personally take some time every day to ban people from spamming the 
wiki with commercial links (mostly diets sites, shoes sites, paper 
publishing crap sites) but never ever I have banned someone editing 
blender content.

If you talk about Doc:2.5/Manual, that is not banning, but warning to 
follow wiki guidelines


> Can this get worse?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFf0ysgNiM
:9



>    1. What would be the new structure of the documentation

 >           * 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)


I don't think we will have a new structure soon :)
At the conf we discussed this and I think it will stay, and also 
possibly I'd like to add a section for quizes, like
Doc:Quiz/Modeling/Foo
that could be  easily transcluded in appropriate pages so tha tpeople 
can self-evaluate after reading each page


@Kernon, I've mentioned your beautiful blender quiz at the conf and I'd 
be glad to expand that idea in the wiki (in Doc: namespace)
Maybe you can help there?



>           * Review the style of the writing


This is something I also want, and was mentioned at the conf talking 
about the excessive verbosity in wiki (more on this at due time).


>    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)


This is already happening daily IMO but still we are 5 people in 
#blenderwiki....

Are you aware of the amount of people that just pop up and say "I have 
an idea!" just to disappear when real job has to be done?

It's not easy IMO...


>    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?


All of the points you mention have been discussed for ages, but I think 
you don't understand that to install an extensions you need to test, and 
have admin rights, and people has no time...

Also, the server admin is very strict on this matter, so no easy again..


There is a plan to have a new server just for testing wiki stuff to see 
if this speeds up the process, but I'm not sure when this will happen, 
really... Server means setup time, which means money and/or time.



Regards,
Luca

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