Documentation

Drupalversity seems to be building quite a bit of momentum, so it would be good to hold a BoF session at DrupalconSF so we can discuss how we're going to get it started. I don't know when or where the BoF will take place, but we can work that out later.

For details on what Drupalversity is, see the blurb below. It was written with n00bs in mind but it should be clear in there that there is work that can be done by Drupalistas from lots of different backgrounds and with various skillsets and levels of experience.

I organized some Drupal 7 documentation sprints the last few Tuesdays (http://groups.drupal.org/node/50403)... They were successful, in that we got a couple of new people going in documentation, and a few patches filed (I'll shout out to trevjs especially, for coming to all of the sprints and patiently working on some patches).

However, the sprints were not very well attended, and we still have a lot to do to get the documentation of Drupal 7 ready for its release (http://drupal.org/node/515870), so I'm wondering how we can get it done.

My questions:

Is there some Drupal documentation or a style guide which explains when to use what HTML markup?

For example, when to use <div class="section">, <div class="content">, <p>

• or when to use <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.

• or when to use <div class="description">

I found the Drupal Markup Style Guide, http://groups.drupal.org/node/6355

^ which has some excellent "high level" guide lines - what I can't find is a catalog of Drupal classes and when to use them or what their purpose/meaning/rationale is

Does this exist?

In the not too distant future - perhaps soon after D7 work is finished - the Drupal handbooks will move to their own site within Drupal.org and hopefully the doc folks will then have much more control over their tools and templates. While it's very exciting to think that we'll finally be able to address some of our challenges - just adding Views would be amazing - I've been thinking that there's an opportunity here to do something that is WAY more awesome. Something that could return huge dividends to the Drupal docs.

There's a discussion going on about standards for documenting classes and interfaces in the Drupal API -- please comment on the issue (and NOT here) if interested:
http://drupal.org/node/718596

Now that this project has started to move, I've started to think about it less in terms of something that I can build myself and more in terms of a bigger project that lots of different people can contribute to, usually in a relatively small way.

I've been toying with some questions surrounding our perpetual difficulty with docs, and our tendency to burn through docs contributors (perceived... maybe not actual).

I'm going to be hosting Drupal 7 documentation sprints on the #drupal-docs IRC channel.

My plan is to have them on Tuesday afternoons from 4pm to 6pm, Seattle time, for the next few weeks (find your time). I'm definitely planning sprints on Feb 16, Feb 23, Mar 2, and Mar 9. [Edit: That's it, for now -- see http://groups.drupal.org/node/55013 for discussion of future sprints.]

This weekend in Seattle I met up with a few folks to talk about some larger documentation team issues which have come to light as a result of a tumultuous year for me personally, which caused me to withdraw from the community and my role as doc team lead. I realize that as the Drupal community has grown and changed, we have outgrown a model where one person alone can coordinate such a huge area as documentation. I asked several people, who had stepped in to fill leadership gaps and contacted me about general leadership concerns, to help me come up with a better plan for a sustainable doc team organization.

Based on various discussions over the last year, it seems that part of the solution involves improving the channels for communication and another part involves sharing leadership with as many people as possible. I feel that these changes will not only help us get docs back on track, but will make the documentation team stronger and more flexible as we head on down the road.

We've been booted out of our own group (the reasons given made sense) so I'm re-posting to this to other groups.

This is the original Drupalversity wiki page that was originally at http://groups.drupal.org/node/44418. I fully expect it to be broken up into subpages at some point.

This page will contain a few trial Drupalversity courses.

I've discussed this idea to some extent on the dev and docs mailing lists, it was suggested that I also post here. In brief:

I think it would be great if we (the broad Drupal community) could put together a series of online courses which teach people different aspects of Drupal.

Hi,

Since I wanted to keep the group description shortish, I thought it would be a good idea to give some more background information to why I believe this group is needed.

I discovered Drupal about a year and half ago. Since then I have learned a lot, as well as thinking about ways to use it for my own projects and business ideas. It has now come as far as I am planning to launch my first real Drupal based website in a few weeks.

Tomorrow, Saturday September 5, we'll be doing an all-day doc sprint. We officially start at 11 a.m. CET (i.e. that's when I'll show up, but feel free to come earlier if you want) and go until 5 p.m. CET, so that is 5 a.m. - 11 a.m. EDT (find your time). The main sprint will be in Paris at the Drupalcon venue in the sprint room that is towards the front of the building (up the stairs, to the right), next to the Ping Vision room.

So we are getting close to Drupalcon now. We have two days for sprinting (Sept. 1 and Sept. 5) and we should have a bit of a game plan going in. I have a rough outline for at least the first day of sprinting, Sept 1. In addition to just getting work done, I would also like to schedule some topical meetings. To best figure out when, please let me know if you are interested in attending a topical meeting by filling in the Doodle for the topics you are interested in (see below) and please pay head to the timezone selector.

THIS WIKI PAGE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

In helping with LA Drupal's D7 Code+Test Sprint event, I noticed there's some easy points that help newbies feel progressive. There are many ways to help at a Code+Test sprint, and here are the ways that helped us in Los Angeles.

• Make sure you have a Drupal.org account, with "Contributor links" turned on in your profile. This will expose a sidebar block linking to areas of interest for contributors. For example: "Patches to review (D7)" is what most people click on to find patches needing review.

This sprint will be August 19 at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT, find your time) in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the Freenode network.

This sprint will be August 18 at 7 PM EDT(find your time) in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the Freenode network.

We'll meet for an hour, starting at 2 p.m. EDT (find your time), in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the Freenode network to discuss the new IA work on the Theming Guide and answer any questions about the guidelines page or other issues that you may have.

The top priority in the Drupal documentation roadmap that was published earlier this summer was to reorganize the information architecture (IA) of the handbooks to make them easier to use and maintain. Becca Scollan volunteered to take the lead and she has been researching and building out a plan of attack. We are now at a good stage to start doing some work that the whole community can engage in.

This sprint will be August 13 at 7 PM EDT(find your time) in the #drupal-docs IRC channel on the Freenode network.