Questions galore!

Hello Jean

I will soon be completing GS Chap 12 and Appendix B to version 4.0.

I will then move onto the Impress Guide and upgrade it to version 4.0. Do you want me to do the Draw Guide after I have completed the Impress Guide?

Regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@gmail.com

Hi Robinson,

To ask a slightly different question: Is there any plan within LO to
remove hosted content or to further change urls for hosted content?

Thanks,
--R

This is a question that would be best put on the website mailing list. But I can well imagine that the answer re: hosted content being removed (or not) will be that this cannot be guaranteed. Content authors will often change their pages and as you can well expect, many have no idea of breaking links when others have linked to their pages, nor that changing their content may change the very nature of the link backs to their pages.

As far as changing URL's, there was recently a quick discussion on the website list regarding such related topic[1]. You may want to have a peek and ask your question there or add to that thread.

The reality of these two particular items is that we need experienced admins to keep watch over their own particular sites and try to keep them as clean as possible. But in the process, try to make the sites as accessible as possible to our authors and not try to impede their work. Sometimes, we may all need an occasional reminder to the different section leads to keep a watch out for this. But, there again, some sections on our site have changed leads several times over the last 2 years ... such is the nature of our community. Maybe after a little more contributor growth, the section lead(s) will become more stable.

Community-contributor growth has to be an important item on all of our minds. We need to promote the great opportunities that exist on our project and that contributing does not necessarily mean spending a "gazillion" amount of hours to do it. Some contribution may mean as little as spending 15 minutes a week on some of our sections. But people need to know this.

Anyway this particular topic should be really moved to the website mailing list for an answer from the website team (I'm also on the website team)

Cheers,

Marc
TDF member
Marketing Team Member
Website Team Member

[1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.documentfoundation.libreoffice.website/9951

That sounds like a plan. Thanks, Peter!

--Jean

When I first went to the odfauthors.org site, I thought that it was a
site for end-users because of the highly-prominent links to books for
sale, but now I believe that the website is largely focused on
internal production. Perhaps there's something we can do to make
things more clear to regular users as well as to our volunteer
community.

ODFAuthors have been partners with OOo and in particular with LibreOffice
from the very start.

cool.

Jean Hollis Weber of ODFAuthors is one of our most
prolific contributors on the project, we also make use of ODFAuthor
resources and goodwill. I believe it is we who should be thankful for
ODFAuthors helping us out with the docs teams and resources. I doubt things
would go as smoothly without Jean and her team at ODFAuthors who work at
quite high professional standards.

Yes, I'd previously run across the "Taming LibreOffice" website, but
didn't put the pieces together until just recently that she was the
head of the Documentation Team :slight_smile:

As far as I can remember, all that same information is already up on the Ask
site. You just have to find it. No need to go to Archive.org.

ok, cool.

IMO, most questions users ask on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site are
probably
best answered there, and, IMO, I don't see a reason to work on any
user-related FAQ when the Ask.LibreOffice.org site is probably the best
type
of solution for a good living/breathing FAQ site.

Using the Ask site as the general FAQ as we go forward sounds like a
solid plan to me. The FAQ on the wiki currently has some overlap with
the Ask site: > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq

What do you guys think about migrating questions from that FAQ to the
Ask site? I'd be happy to shepherd that work, if that's amenable to
you.

I don't think this would be an acceptable option as the FAQ is, again, used
in large part for contributor work.

Ah, okay. Most of the questions on the FAQ on the wiki seem to relate
more to *use* of LibreOffice than being a *contributor* to the
project. The contributor-specific content I see on that page is a link
to the "List of Frequently Asked Questions for Development".

These types of questions/categories seem like they're more suited to a
user-targeted FAQ:

- "Spell-checking doesn't work !"
- "What are the system requirements for LibreOffice? "
- "How do I change the email client used by LibreOffice? "

IMO, there is nothing wrong with
overlapping/doubling or information as people tend to operate in different
ways; some like to get information from FAQ's, others from Ask sites, others
from mailing lists, others from forums ... IMO, it is up to the site
maintainers to triage the information appropriately so that it is factual
(as best as one can get) for their own particular user base. To me, it
doesn't sound like a good idea to remove a contributor tool for users when
we are in need of contributors.

I think doubling could be okay if we had enough manpower to maintain
all of our web properties. As you mention, we are in need of
contributors, and every additional copy of documentation or
information requires additional personnel to keep it fresh and up to
date.

To wit, some of the entries in the wiki FAQ are merely pointers to
other pages (e.g. the System Requirements) and seem unlikely to
change. However there are other pages, such as the information about
supported file formats, or information about the user profile, that
may need more frequent updates:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/012
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/110 (redirects to
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile)
Also see https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile

I believe that since 3.6, LO has dropped support for export in some
StarOffice file formats, and I believe that the user profile for LO4
is stored under .config/libreoffice/4/, but we haven't had a chance to
update that information yet.

The Ask site is mostly reactive, rather than proactive, so while we do
have updated info about the StarOffice formats:
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/1839/i-have-some-old-star-office-writer-files-extension/

...we don't have up to date information about the User Profiles:
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/5899/user-profile/
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/903/where-are-the-libreoffice-data-profile-files/
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/4628/how-to-reset-user-profile-on-mac-osx-108-mountain/

The Ask site contributors seem to be basing their information on
what's on the wiki, so perhaps we should put a stronger emphasis on
keeping the information on the wiki up to date. I know that's a really
big task, but it's definitely worth some thought.

  - When answering a Q, there should be a clear/easy way to ask the Doc
Team where to find the latest documentation on a particular topic

  - If "How do I do X?" comes up and we don't have (can't find?) good
docs on it, there should be an easy way to ping the Doc team about the
need [File as an enhancement bug?]

  - The text of really good Answers should be fed back to the Doc team
for inclusion in the next iteration of the documentation [Not sure if
this should be a pull or a push action]

This sounds more like a business model/plan where the people who work on the
project are considered employees and not volunteers. While this sounds like
an ideal plan, I would venture to guess that an organizational scheme of
this magnitude would not work. This would set up too many regulations rather
than opportunities to contribute.

I'm not sure that my suggestions would introduce "regulations," but I
do agree with your general assessment. In particular, I believe that
what I'm describing is a more integrated workflow, and such a workflow
is difficult without a commitment from the senior members of each team
to make sure that incoming requests are dealt with promptly. It's
difficult to get that kind of a commitment from an all-volunteer team!

We are built on a meritocratic philosophy
which is why we have seen so much growth in our dev section -- this is what
is so attractive to our contributors. Unfortunately, our other contributor
branches have not been able to keep up to the pace. It is all up to us to
trumpet the values of our project and try to attract contributor in our
branches.

A little friendly competition for volunteer talent :slight_smile: So there's no
unified approach to attracting new talent, like a Volunteer
Coordinator? It would be neat to have some coordination on how we
could suggest people to participate. I know we have the page about
getting involved (https://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/), but
someone to help with proactive recruitment might not be a bad idea.

IMO, the quickest fix for the problem at hand is still the rationalization
of the Ask site, culling the question/answers that are on the database at
the present time ... I know it is a big job ... but regardless of any fix,
you will still have to do this.

I think one of the strengths of the Ask site is the ability for users
to see a variety of questions and answers. We could consider
"curating" the site more, but that would require more users to step up
into positions of greater power and responsibility, and require some
tough calls because we can't easily combine information from two
questions into a single question. Closing questions is reversible (and
those questions are still searchable), but I'm much more cautious
about deleting content. In any case, any culling of the answers will
need to wait a bit until we've dealt with our backlog.

It also sounds like the Ask site should try
to involve more contributors on their site to help with responses to user
questions, have you tried to grow your contributor base by inviting regular
competent participants to join your ranks?

Yes, I've definitely asked some people to join us. I've also lost a
couple of key contributors. One of the issues is that the Ask site
doesn't have a unified mailing list, IRC channel, or forum for us to
cultivate a community. Our only interaction is through Questions,
Answers, and Comments (which can lead to some interesting situations,
like using comments on an Answer as a poor-man's forum thread :slight_smile:

IMO, the fact that there are different contributor FAQ's are fine, the user
FAQ is supposed to the the Ask site.

(not sure what you were intending to say here)

And yes, unfortunately, there may be
some overlapping, but the quality of answers on the site still remains the
responsibility of the people behind the Ask site.

If, when you say "the people behind the Ask site" you mean the
mods/admins, I'm not sure I agree. The quality of the answers on the
Ask site comes from how vibrant a community we create, and how
involved our senior, knowledgeable members become. The people behind
the Ask site -- the mods, admins, etc -- are already kept busy by a
lot of 'housekeeping' tasks, and some of the key members also try to
make sure that every question gets at least a cursory answer. I think
we all strive for quality, but don't always have time to give each
question the care and research that it deserves.

To compare with a similar situation, would you say that the
Documentation Team is currently responsible for the quality of the
documentation on the wiki?

Note that I am not annoyed with your questions nor with your suggestions.
But, it looks to me that you are looking for answers to the problems on the
Ask site in the wrong places. Once the Ask site is cleaned up, you may find
that most of the problems will have lessened.

But, as we are following meritocratic philosophical values on the project,
there is nothing to stop you from organizing such a structure as you
describe, and, perhaps it may be adopted by the rest of us. Put in writing
on a wiki for people to read and if you find enough contributors to run it,
then we may all follow. It may work!

Fair enough. I believe that better coordination between the
Documentation Team and the members of the Ask site could be very
helpful to the user-support process, and I'll do what I can to help
keep the lines of communication open. Putting proposals up on the wiki
sounds like a good step once I've had a bit more experience
interacting with the different teams and can formulate more complete
solutions. For now, I'll join as many lists as I can handle, fix bits
and pieces here and there, and learn a bit more about how the various
parts of LO operate :slight_smile:

Cheers,
--R

Ah, interesting. So if I understand correctly, the wiki, main site,
blog, ask site, forum, extensions, templates, etc... are all
standardized on CC-BY-SA 3.0. The user guides are (mostly) CC-BY 3.0,
so the guides may be mixed-in to the content of the CC-BY-SA sites,
however the help wiki is LGPLv3, so it's only directly compatible with
the code of LibreOffice.

Does the help wiki need to be LGPLv3 because of the way it's combined
with what we ship?

--R

Hi :slight_smile:
I am somewhat embarrassed that fairly early on  i created a wiki-page about User Profiles at almost exactly the same time as someone else also created one

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile

we kept bumping into the same problem in the Users mailing list and then someone (Dennis? Jay? Andreas?) gave a link to Hagar's answer in the OOo forums.  Each time we had to remind people to swap out OOo and replace with LO.  So eventually i copy&pasted Hagar's answer into a wiki-page and got him to approve it.  Since then both pages have been updated sporadically and each one has useful stuff that is not on the other! :frowning: [looks down in shame] [shuffles feet].

I keep meaning to copy&paste the best of both onto 1 page, probably the

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile
and then put a redirect on the other page.  In the process i think it's highly likely that the page is going to need a lot of re-organisation.  Especially now that it needs to refer to the major new release as well as the older branches.

Obviously

LibreOffice\3\user
has become

LibreOffice\4\user
but many people are going to continue using 3.x.x for quite a few years.

So, i can easily do the redirect but gathering the information and merging and editing are exactly what i am bad at.  So i keep putting it off hoping the problem will magically fix itself!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Jean is somewhat shy of being refereed to as any type of leader so we try to avoid mentioning it or making it obvious.  Very early on quite a few people in the team were adamant that we should NOT have a team leader and should have a flatter hierarchy, like a true co-operative or something.

However, even though she didn't want the post Jean quickly proved to be naturally gifted leader so we pretty much all turned around and made her leader, over-riding her objections.  She tried to escape once but after a few months we managed to recapture her and she accidentally fell back into leading us again.

Managers fill a useful function but leaders crank that up a few notches and put in a lot of work and inspire others.  Also while managers cope with things the way they are leaders have a vision of the way things need to be and help get us there.  Jean sometimes tries hard not to do that sort of thing but she really can't help herself.

Documentation would be in a really sorry state if it wasn't for Jean but we try to avoid calling her leader even though she blatantly is a good one.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
I am somewhat embarrassed that fairly early on i created a wiki-page about User Profiles at almost exactly the same time as someone else also created one

11 months aren't "almost exactly the same time" except watching earth. :wink:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile

2011-11-11

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile

2010-12-25

I keep meaning to copy&paste the best of both onto 1 page, probably the

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile
and then put a redirect on the other page.

User profile and its usage isn't a "problem" of documentation but a
main item, so the page should be:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile

This is the elder page, too.

Redirect is a good thing because your page was visited quite often.

Hi :slight_smile:
Blimey!!  I wonder why no-one used the existing link in the Users List and kept pointing to the OOo one instead!

I prefer it when pages are sub-pages of a particular team rather than no-one thinking it's anything to do with them and thus not maintaining the page or not knowing what angle the page is coming from.  Soemthing i really liked about Gnu&Linux was the automatic menus being in sub-sections.  In Windows people are somewhat scared of using their
Start - All Programs
menu because such a lot of junk ad clutter appears it's difficult to work out which is crucial and which should go.  Also a high chance of accidentally selecting the wrong menu item and suddenly finding that instead of getting on with work you are suddenly in Systems Administrators mode and dealing with technical problems.

More importantly if people use 'my' page more then it's kinda best to keep using it and redirect from the page people are not visiting so much.  I assume we are talking about orders of magnitude rather than just a few more.  Also it's not really my page.  I just copied it from Hagar's OOo one.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
Once the Guides are updated for the 4.0.0 it would be more ideal if the docs team could work on the in-built help because 
1.  All the translator teams put a very high priority on translating the in-built help but don't get much time to do the guides

2.  It's really, really ancient and out-of-date, around 8 years out-of-date!  Possibly still referring to 'recent' changes in the name from StarOffice to OOo.

It's going to be a pain to work with because of the xml tags but perhaps Kate or Gedit or something might help by colour-coding tags so they are easier to ignore.  Some people are working on making the editors interface easier for non-devs to work with and one of those was an original founder of TDF so she's quite powerful and good at getting things done.  If we could get others to help her it wouldn't hurt though.

People from Ask are welcome to edit the wiki.  Everything on the wiki is under 2 and half years old and people do work quite hard at it already.  It's the nature of wiki's in general and LO's particularly that changes and improvements are always possible.  So, although not quite perfect it is pretty good and does have people working on it.

Other items that the docs team have put on their wish-list would be great too but it's the in-built help that would have the biggest impact.  I'm just not sure we are able to deal with it.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
I like the idea of "Volunteer Coordinator" but prefer a change of emphasis to "Community Development" to pro-actively recruit new people to various teams and prioritising teams that are most in need of new people.  That would include raising the profile of the various teams both within the project as a whole (particularly on the user support type places such a Ask and the Users List (and the forums)) but also perhaps outside of TDF and LO.

Specific teams such as Accessibility and Base really need a LOT more people or a lot more coordination between those that are working on it.  Docs Team always needs more people of course but is already a LOT better off than Accessibility.

Ideally each team would have at least 1 or 2 people on each other list and on Ask and in the new Forum in order to help feedback when relevant issues arise.  Since some other lists are extremely high traffic it might well need different people to liaise with different lists.

So far the team that seems best at liaising is the docs team.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Tom

We have a liaison list since the beginning, it's the projects@ list. We had it since the beginning.

Best,
Charles.

Tom Davies <tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk> a écrit :

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahhh, i might turn my previous answer around.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile
accessed 26,000 times

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile
accessed   5,000 times

The shorter url might be better because it's more widely known but i still think it might be better being within the Documentation section and redirecting from the shorter url.

So, now i am really curious about which one people in the Docs Team think would be better. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom, all,

Hi :slight_smile: Once the Guides are updated for the 4.0.0 it would be more
ideal if the docs team could work on the in-built help because

Thanks for your call for help on the help :slight_smile: Some details however :

1.

All the translator teams put a very high priority on translating the
in-built help but don't get much time to do the guides

In fact it's two different work, you don't need to be a localizer to
translate the guide, but the contrary is more difficult. Localization is
not linear and is out of context, you don't have pages or chapters to
translate, only strings from several different files. So this is not the
same "job".

2. It's really, really ancient and out-of-date, around 8 years
out-of-date! Possibly still referring to 'recent' changes in the
name from StarOffice to OOo.

As I already told you, this is _not true_ at all. This is now near 12
years that I work on the localization of OOo and now LO, the help files
have been updated all the time until it becomes LO. Now there has been
several new features or strings added that have not been mirrored in the
help, the same for some strings removed that has not been removed from
the help files. But there has been some work done however it was not
complete.

It's going to be a pain to work with because of the xml tags but
perhaps Kate or Gedit or something might help by colour-coding tags
so they are easier to ignore.

The difficulty are not the tags per se, it's the structure that you have
to have in mind which is more difficult to learn.

Some people are working on making the

editors interface easier for non-devs to work with and one of those
was an original founder of TDF so she's quite powerful and good at
getting things done. If we could get others to help her it wouldn't
hurt though.

I think you're speaking about me :wink: I'm not alone, there is also some
member of the FR group who are willing to help, and some devs who are
working on the help also.

People from Ask are welcome to edit the wiki. Everything on the wiki
is under 2 and half years old and people do work quite hard at it
already. It's the nature of wiki's in general and LO's particularly
that changes and improvements are always possible. So, although not
quite perfect it is pretty good and does have people working on it.

What is on the wiki is the exact reflection of what is along the
product. The source is English (like for the UI), we translate it on
Pootle and then deliver it to the wiki or the product.
Now, the workflow has to be decided with the l10n team too. And also be
aware that writing help items is _not_ like writing documentation, it's
a different purpose and should be envisaged has complementary. It should
be possible to access it of line, very quickly and whatever how old your
computer is. It should give a brief description of a string or a dialog,
not more (it's not a how-to, it's not a training support, etc.). So the
people wanting to participate should first get very familiar with the
help as it is currently and adapt them to this content.

Other items that the docs team have put on their wish-list would be
great too but it's the in-built help that would have the biggest
impact. I'm just not sure we are able to deal with it.

Yes, it's true. If well organized that shouldn't take long to update it,
clean it and make it useful again.
Thanks Tom for your lobbying on that :wink:

Kind regards
Sophie

Yes this list serves for cross communication between NL projects,
developers and all the projects who need to communicate about their work
(ESC minutes are posted on it for example).
Kind regards
Sophie

Actually, Jean is quite happy to be referred to as Leader of the Documentation Team.

--Jean

Oh, interesting! I didn't know that such a list existed...

I took a glance at the mailing list page, but didn't find a mention of
'projects' or the 'projects list':
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/

Is the projects mailing list something we'd like to add to that page?

Thanks,
--R

Hi :slight_smile:
Ah, cool.  Good to hear. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: