[Bf-docboard] Specific plans and discussion of what our manual should be and how to get it

[brita]

These are mostly all topics that have been discussed on the wiki channel,
considering the experience of several people.

The manual is the manual. It is not a tutorial, it is not the python
reference, it should not teach you graphics concepts as what is a camera or
how to animate.
There are other and more appropriate places for that.

The manual is a comprehensive set of pages that cover the usability of
Blender.

Blender is also a very big software that encompasses many areas. It is
difficult to make a linear manual that goes through everything only once in
the right order, and that is short and readable while containing all the
information that a user of varying expertise and background may ever wish
for.

The new tentative structure of the manual has been reviewed in the last two
weeks. It now mainly needs a lot of reviewing and filling, making also sure
that more people get on board and that the technology supports a good
workflow.

As to the organization of the collaborators, it is described in
http://www.blender.org/manual/about/introduction.html
that before was in blender.org/documentation.
The information about the documentation is being unified in an hopefully
clearer.

The main idea is, there are section owners that get to decide things about
their own sections and regular contributors. A new contributor should
submit their changes for review before gaining access, as also explained in
that documentation.
The table with who owns what is being worked on right now. With the current
status of the documentation, there are a lot of abandoned areas that need
to be picked up.


It is against Blender's philosophy to spam everyone that uses Blender with
emails or polls or to silently fish information.
People should be involved in their own way, at their own pace if they have
such interest.

It is important to communicate well (where do you find tutorials, what do
you do if you are starting a commercial project .. ). The ways in which
blender communicates, (mainly in blender.org) are always a work in progress.
People are different and have their own ways and sense of privacy. Projects
such as blender.org or the cloud or blender stackexchange or the manual
need to grow on themselves. People will find them by needing and searching.


Then this:
"
Those who already have downloaded whatever that stuff is that I couldn't
even be bothered to read
"
is not really nice. If you really want to help, I suggest you actually read
the
http://www.blender.org/manual/about
following the instructions to get started contributing.
You could, for instance, review the User Preferences section to make sure
that all options are up to date. Or get started with one of the new Editor
pages.


Inês Almeida / brita_
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