Need HELP texts for changed feature

Hi André,

I think the magic ingredient to getting non-devs involved in feature
implementations and bug fixes is to actively reach out to other teams
via the mailing lists when there's a specific need - like you did in
this case.

For instance, speaking for myself, I'm more than happy to help out.
All you need to do is buzz me with a specific request. The best way to
do that is to write to the list and ask for a volunteer. If I'm able
to oblige then I surely will. If I can't then maybe someone else will
speak up.

I can't think of a better way of doing things than this, but the
general initiative of involving non-devs in these things is good. It's
probably not always necessary, so outreaching on a case-by-case basis
is maybe the best solution?

Hi David,

Hi André,

I think the magic ingredient to getting non-devs involved in feature
implementations and bug fixes is to actively reach out to other teams
via the mailing lists when there's a specific need - like you did in
this case.

This won't work. As told in the other mail - it took twice the time to go to several mailing lists and ask for contributions than learning how to implement things and finally do the implementation.

If people want to change this situation we must do something - and we need to do more than telling developers to go to other mailing lists. I want to see more people at e.g. ux-advise list coming up with their own ideas an leading a work item (instead of just following the developer's suggestions).

For instance, speaking for myself, I'm more than happy to help out.
All you need to do is buzz me with a specific request.

And I'm very thankfull for that.

I can't think of a better way of doing things than this, but the
general initiative of involving non-devs in these things is good. It's
probably not always necessary, so outreaching on a case-by-case basis
is maybe the best solution?

We should not be over-formalized with all this. It's really case-by-case.

But it is dangerous to have knowledge split across several mailing lists and non-developers not monitoring ongoing development. E.g., at some point I was in favour of removing the grid color option. The rationale was that there is an other place to define that color. Fortunately Regina made me aware, that we will face compatibility options with OOo.

regards,

André

Hi,

I'd suggest a couple of minor changes:

"Specifies when grid lines will be displayed. Default is to display
grid lines only on cells that do not have a background color. You can
choose to also display grid lines on cells with background color, or
to hide them. For printing, choose Format - Page - Sheet and mark the
Grid check box."

Thanks - I'll use this.

btw.: This help item is incomplete, as we can hide grids per sheet view
toolbar.

Can you write a suggested text here, so that we can review it?

You may call me mulish - but there are dozends of documentation writers
here at the list, able to provide much better suggestions than I.
Everyone could do what I would have to do: Open product help, see where
the text is missing. Open calc and see what the other way is to hide the
gridlines. Write the sentence and file a bug report.

You may file the bugreport to me (I'll see, If I get direct commit
access for help files - well actually I even have that I think).

Imho documentation team should have the lead for product and online
help. Developers should only be involved for the commit to the source
repository.

Regards,

André

Hi André,

I think the magic ingredient to getting non-devs involved in feature
implementations and bug fixes is to actively reach out to other teams
via the mailing lists when there's a specific need - like you did in
this case.

This won't work. As told in the other mail - it took twice the time to go to
several mailing lists and ask for contributions than learning how to
implement things and finally do the implementation.

If people want to change this situation we must do something - and we need
to do more than telling developers to go to other mailing lists. I want to
see more people at e.g. ux-advise list coming up with their own ideas an
leading a work item (instead of just following the developer's suggestions).

Well, me, I'm signed up to the UX list. But it just makes another list
to track. Speaking for myself, I'm taken up right now working on
forging Alfresco into a useful tool for the project, so I don't
currently have a lot of time for other stuff, except when specifically
requested to do something.

Are we lacking some kind of software tool to help bring teams together?

Is it worth putting this subject on the agenda of an SC meeting and
talking about it voice there?

Hi André,

You may call me mulish - but there are dozends of documentation writers
here at the list, able to provide much better suggestions than I.
Everyone could do what I would have to do: Open product help, see where
the text is missing. Open calc and see what the other way is to hide the
gridlines. Write the sentence and file a bug report.

You may file the bugreport to me (I'll see, If I get direct commit
access for help files - well actually I even have that I think).

OK, well I'll bookmark this for attention when I get time. Maybe
someone else would like to step up and take this on?

Imho documentation team should have the lead for product and online
help. Developers should only be involved for the commit to the source
repository.

Well, I agree that this would be logical. However, we're a bit
short-handed right now to organize this properly. Again, are we
lacking a software tool that would interface the devs better with the
documentation and design teams? I think that theoretically Alfresco
could provide the answer, although that would require some design and
development work to implement. Is there some other interim or
permanent solution?

Hi,

Are we lacking some kind of software tool to help bring teams together?

A tool might improve collaboration, if people are aware what
could/should be done best by whom.
A tool does only pretend to improve collaboration if people are not yet
aware that there is a need for collaboration.

Is it worth putting this subject on the agenda of an SC meeting and
talking about it voice there?

Not - yet. As told somewhere else in the thread(s) - I'm going to think
about improvements later and then start discussion (needs to be
discussed with more developers). This is not necessarily a topic for the
SC, I much prefer the community to be self-organizing.

regards,

André

Hi :slight_smile:
The Devs List/Team has far more people than the Documentation Team/List. So
although there are lots of good ideas that would be great to do there is very
limited potential to actually do those things. Obviously actually doing
documentation work needs to be the priority.

It would be great if every mailing list had a couple of people on every other
mailing list. I'm on Steering-discuss, Steering and Users. When issues appear
in one of those lists that really needs to go to another one of those lists or
needs to hear about outcomes of discussions on another list then i can try to
forward relevant emails. However just 4 lists takes up so much of my time that
i can't get actively involved in actually doing any of the real work in any of
the teams. If other people in the documentation team followed the same lists as
me then no documentation work would ever get done.

There has to be a better way of getting an overview of the activities of several
groups than is possible using mailing lists.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi again,
I have seen something called "Forums" in other projects.

It's a bit like the bug-reporting place. Rather than getting bombarded by vast
amount of irrelevant emails the user actively goes to the sites. Good ones
allow people to subscribe to specific threads about particular issues. The
threads are sorted into sub-categories within main categories that could be the
main groups. There can even be a column that shows how recently the last post
appeared in a sub-category so that people can keep an eye on what are active
issues. Something like

Documentation Team
    Collaboration with other lists
    New members
    Screen-shots
    Writer
    Calc
    Draw
    Base
    OOo & ODFauthors
Devs Team
    New members
    Javascript
    DocX compatibility
    Base
Users
    DocX compatibility
    Side-by-side with OOo (or another LO version)
    Stability in 3.4.x branch
    Installing
    Training & Documentation
Steering-Discuss
    New members
    Training
    Governance, Rules and T&Cs
    Licences
    Branches & forks
    OOo

Obviously there would be a LOT more per group and some of those sub-categories
might need to contain sub-sub-categories just like any filing system.
  
The main point is that someone might want to hear all about Writer and
compatibility with other projects but might be completely dis-interested in
hearing anything about Base = or the other way around. People might pop-in to
ask 1 question about some minor issue and not want to hear detailed blow-by-blow
accounts of how 500 other users are dealing with other minor issues.

If we used forums rather than mailing lists i might be able to get involved in
some real work here. At the moment i don't.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
David's changes make it clearer. It didn't take much because the original was
quite good.

The problem with asking for help is that while the question might seem obvious
to the person asking there might be a large number of variables that they might
be unaware of. Usually someone in the answering team will ask questions to find
out precisely what is being asked. Hopefully they might be able to take a guess
at an answer in the same email.

At work one of my colleagues said his "computer was totally f@*$%^d". He asked
me for help but wouldn't let me see or handle the machine and wouldn't answer
any of my questions about it. This went on for about 2 days. When i finally
managed to get him to answer about 3 simple questions i was able to fix it in 3
mouse-clicks taking about 1minute. The next time he told me his machine was
completely dead he answered my 1st question a lot faster so instead of being
down for 2 days he was back almost seemlessly. The 3rd time he just wanted me
to watch while he fixed it himself. After that people stopped bothering to set
his Windows to open with a single-click rather than a double-click.

Much the same seemed to happen here. Quite a few people asked Andre
specifically what the text was that he wanted proof-reading and where that text
appears but all he did was keep repeating the links to the wiki-page that all
looked perfect. As soon as we found out what text needed editing it was easy to
help.

The failure to help was not to do with the system nor the software used. Next
time we have to deal with questions from devs we now know that it might help to
find the bug-report / feature-request thread at freedesktop or where-ever.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: