Documentation

Once again, big thanks to Hans for pulling together a summary for us. The original IRC log is here: http://pastebin.com/f13c30b7a

Announcements

• Leisa from MBD has a new post up re: docs redesign ideas: http://www.disambiguity.com/drupalorg-redesign-a-strategy-for-the-docume...
• The next iteration (#9) of the redesign just went up http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration9/
• The FP post re: open editing is up

So this is an issue that has been kicking around in my head for a while. It was raised briefly earlier this year on the list and it was decided to stick with the mailing list. I raised it again today during our IRC meeting to get a general pulse. So, I'm going to lay it all out and see what the larger team thinks.

I am proposing that we deprecate the documentation mailing list and use groups.drupal.org for our discussions instead. In order to not have conversations happening in two places we need to have one definitive "discussion" venue. Due to this, the current docs group is "read-only." To make it read-only we have to limit who can actually become a member of the group. Limiting membership like this severely hampers our use of all the tools that g.d.o could offer us.

We've set the time for the next IRC meeting. The meeting will be for 1 hour in the #drupal-docs FreeNode channel on Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 1 p.m. EST (18:00 GMT, 10 a.m. PST).

Agenda:

• Announcements
• Limiting page creation? (please continue this discussion on list and use the meeting to hash out remaining bits/action items)
• Next projects on radar:
  • Getting started guide for D6 needs basic content completed
  • Reorganizing the theme guides

The last meeting we covered a lot of ground and bounced around a bunch of ideas. We didn't have much time to dive into new projects, so let's set another one up soon. the meeting will be for 1 hour in the #drupal-docs FreeNode channel.

Here is the scheduling Doodle: http://doodle.com/u2xw6996qgkfd9yt (Please respond to the Doodle with your preference by Thursday, November 13.)

HansBKK is currently lead on the workgroup to help create a single, well-organized Theming Guide, and will be the main point of contact for questions. Any interested documentation team members are invited to join in this effort. Others that would like to contribute should first request to join the docs team; see the "Pitch In!" section below.

History

The original post in the documentation team's issue queue discussing this project was Reorganize Theme handbooks and the currently active one is Theming doc workgroup forming.

See the announcement for this project posted to drupal.org's front page.

Current project stage

Addi has merged the main D5 and D6 theming guides into one. There are still four other major locations for theming information in the drupal.org handbooks that are candidates for merging once we have a decent structure:

• Beyond the Basics: Theme HowTos
• BtB: Theming snippets
• BtB: Contributed themes
• BtB: Comparisons of contrib themes

plus of course many valuable contributions scattered around in other parts of the Handbooks.

HUGE thanks to HansBKK for doing the summary this time round. Here is the full log: http://pastebin.com/f31e56f30 This is the summary for today's IRC meeting, with a few edits by me:

Meeting agenda: http://groups.drupal.org/node/16343

Let's get together and whip up some Doc Love. We'll meet for 3 hours at the DC Public Library to work on Drupal and then, if folks are interested, we can go out for food and drinks after. We have a medium meeting room (A-9) reserved from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sat. November 8. (For directions to the room, see below in the Where? section.)

Our next IRC meeting will be on Friday, November 7 at Noon EST (17:00 GMT, 9 a.m. PST). We will meet in the #drupal-docs channel on the FreeNode network for one hour.

Agenda:
- Announcements
- Discuss the open editing experience. Is it working, should we continue? Thoughts, improvements? (Update: there is a thread, Open editing/limiting creation? I started on the list related to this)
- Catch up on the D.o Redesign and how it is effecting docs (Iteration 7 is up and we have a good thread on docs going)
- Discuss next projects (Getting Started guide, reorg the theme guides)

Feel free to add to the agenda and discuss open editing prior to the meeting on the docs mail list.

Well, we have had open editing for a week now and so far so good as I
have been watching. We should meet to talk about how our trial is
going and whether we want to continue to keep it open or close back
up. We can also talk about the state of the redesign. If you have
other agenda items, feel free to add.

Here is the doodle to schedule the meeting: http://www.doodle.com/667xykvs65hhyh5z

Please add your preference to the Doodle by Thursday, October 30. We will meet for one hour in the #drupal-docs IRC channel, as usual.

The redesign has been doing lots of great stuff, rethinking how we approach Drupal.org. We should take this opportunity to really think about how we present documentation on the site. There has been a lot of talk and there are lots of little nits of annoyance in addition to the larger complaint of organization with regard to the handbooks. I wanted to try to gather up at least some of the larger things for us to consider and continue the discussion so that we can focus on specific changes while we have the services of MBD available to us.

Here is a brief summary of the IRC meeting held Friday, October 10. The IRC log can be read here: http://pastebin.com/f575075de. I had to leave the meeting early due to an unplanned meeting that came up, for which I apologize, and thanks to everyone that kept the meeting running. :-)

Announcements:
- Our group page has tabs for things like projects and issues now

We have decided to open up editing rights for all users for a one month trial period. (See the mail list discussion summary.) We opened up permissions on October 15 and have decided to let them remain open. We will announce the continuation on our November 15 deadline.

The next Documentation IRC meeting will be on October 10th, 2008 in the #drupal-docs IRC channel (on the freenode network) beginning at 16:00 GMT and lasting for one hour. The agenda will be:

1. Wrap up discussion on the Getting Involved handbook. We will touch on important remaining items, if there are any. Feel free to keep working on it in the meantime: http://groups.drupal.org/node/15415 ;-)

Now that the Getting Involved book is started up, I wanted to set up a time for the next IRC meeting. Our IRC meetings are held in the #drupal-docs channel on the Freenode netwrok and last one hour. Let' s shoot for something next week with the top agenda items being:

1. Wrap up discussion on Getting Involved. I hope we get a fair bit of cleanup done during this week but we should touch on important remaining items, if there are any.

The Getting Involved handbook project has been in the works since March 2008. For background on this project, read the Drupal.org front page post.

(Note: I have moved the contents of this node to a sub-page of the http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core section: http://drupal.org/node/363007 - webchick)

During the sprint window whoever happens to have a few free moments can stop by #drupal-docs IRC channel (on the Freenode network) and help out with preparing the Getting Involved handbook for launch. There will be someone around during the entire time to answer questions, give direction and help newbies out on work to be done, so if you have a spare 15 minutes, roll on by and be part of the process. Newbies are encouraged!

(Note, there are two sprints planned, one on Tues. Sept. 23 and another on Thurs. Sept 25.)

During the sprint window whoever happens to have a few free moments can stop by #drupal-docs IRC channel (on the Freenode network) and help out with preparing the Getting Involved handbook for launch. There will be someone around during the entire time to answer questions, give direction and help newbies out on work to be done, so if you have a spare 15 minutes, roll on by and be part of the process. Newbies are encouraged!

(Note, there are two sprints planned, one on Tues. Sept. 23 and another on Thurs. Sept 25.)

What'll we be doing?

The new Getting involved handbook needs some focused attention to get it going. I'd like to create the book and announce it to the larger community by Sept. 28. During the last IRC meeting we thought that maybe a few short virtual sprints focused just on this task might help since many folks aren't quite sure what needs to be done, or just have a hard time setting time aside for it.

This is a copy of the summary email for the Sept 14 IRC meeting, sent out to the Documentation mail list at http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-September/006273.html

Here is the IRC log from the meeting: http://pastebin.com/f183bcc8d

We had several announcements at the beginning of the meeting and then we hit the two agenda items. As usual if I missed anything in here or others have feedback/thoughts, feel free to add to this summary. Thanks to all who attended.