Notes from GUADEC 2015

Screeenshots

Screenshot automation references from GUADEC 2014:

An example configuration file with script-based procedures consumable by the screenshot automation framework:

https://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/tree/tests/screenshot_tour.feature

Any media which we need to use for screenshots need to be public domain.

Action: talk to the design team as there is already a git repository with this sort of thing
Bastien has started something to have demo content for kiosks at events: https://github.com/hadess/gnome-demo-content

Dogtail:

https://fedorahosted.org/dogtail/
Can be used for applications which are in continuous

Notes

Create stock photos of our own, e.g. photo app w/ public domain images?
Dogtail doesn't take shots of GNOME Shell - only of apps.
Might be a good idea for the developers to help docs create scripts that can then be used by the docs team

Onboarding

Challenges to onboarding for both docs and translation teams

Reducing the barrier of entry - if something is too technical
Humanization - who is part of this community that I'm joining? (might have privacy issues)
Retention

Mentoring

Summer of Code - retention mechanism, pretty good. why? mentor - personal coaching, length of time, get past some of the barriers, pre-internship interest, team style (significant contributions, like a few pages of content... in GNOME, then you have to submit a patch and get it accepted).

Commitment: Right now it's been about 3 years of contribution for the docs team.

Community: all interns should attend a hackfest in their first 6 months (doc sprints)

Look at Julita's blog for ideas on IRC onboarding tips:

https://lleksah.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/connecting-to-irc-with-empathy-fedora/

Docs Team

Challenges for the Docs Team:

Changing the English affects all languages, therefore it makes people less likely to try to change things in English.
Retention & ROI with mentoring people.
Blip (http://blip.syllogist.net/) didn't get worked on. We would like a way to see the completion status of all of the pages.
http://blip.syllogist.net/doc/git.gnome.org/gnome-user-docs/gnome-help/master#pages
What are the different roles and "job descriptions"?
Docs process and workflow is not well known.
Need to know when things are out of date. How can we make the process for reporting errors easy?

Action Steps for Docs:

Translation statuses - which ones are ready for translation and which ones are not? Might want to set some internal deadlines and cycles.
Readiness status needs to be implemented in ITS. Mark things as final or not. - (@Shaun) - talk to the Zanata people to try to implement flags. Extension in ITS 3.0! This is the infrastructure in order to allow for flags. Investigate doing readiness tool.
Create an open source style guide or a docs team style guide. (Might be done at a 5 day hackfest.) Look into Google's Book sprint? @Kat & Shaun to look into a hackfest.
Refresh the wiki pages. Add a link to the voice / style guide on the wiki page or somewhere in the onboarding process.
Might want to include:
https://wiki.gnome.org/AllanDay/HelpDesign
This is BOF material, want people who are not docs people!
Make people more aware of the yelp-check (http://yelp.io/tools/yelp-check). People should be using it. Blog about it or somehow else make people aware of it. (Shaun just tweeted it!) What are other ways we can do this?
Engage people by showing them where they can contribute. List of areas or general projects that a new person could work on. Or, urgent areas.
https://wiki.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Tasks/ - a great start! Is there a way to make this more engaging / keep improving?
Easy docs bugs: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=documentation%2C%20gnome-love&keywords_type=allwords&list_id=53357&resolution=---
Create a process for how non-writers can flag things that are out of date or that can be improved. This is BOF material - feedback button in Yelp (send to docs feedback group)? @Shaun with Dave (to put a button on Yelp) https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=753449
Review Allan's doc and give feedback: Design notes: https://wiki.gnome.org/AllanDay/HelpDesign @Kat, David & Petr

Who We Want as a Contributor:

People who know English well
Be able to use the tools but don't need to hack, can learn technical things easily
Needs to be a user (can be any kind of OS). Need to be able to actually run the software
Link to it from https://www.gnome.org/get-involved/