Mitchell Baker wrote: > At the same time, I've been trying to figure out why this discussion > causes me to feel unsettled. This post is very helpful; it has finally > helped me figure out the cause. > > The approach outlined below is quite different from that which > mozilla.org staff generally uses. That's not to say staff is right, or > the approach below won't work, but it is not our standard operating style. > > In general, staff looks at existing contributors and people who have > tried to contribute but run into problems, tries to identify what > problems they are having and works to fix those problems. In the > documentation world, this translates into encouraging people to create > documentation, talking to those who are or who want to contribute > documentation, finding out what problems they are having, and then > developing whatever policies or tools are necessary solve existing > problems. > > In other words, we would start out with a call for people to write, > edit, maintain docs, and get to policy and tools later on. This way we > avoid creating policies that aren't necessary, although at the price of > needing a policy before we have one. This is of course the opposite > approach to that outlined below. > > It will be interesting to see how this approach works. Staff is > generally wary of creating policy before a crying need has been > demonstrated, but perhaps we'll learn something new here. > > Mitchell
Madame, I will be the first to admit I am being somewhat unconventional here. John Keiser of Netscape has pointed out to me that my so-called management roadmap is more of a manifesto (which isn't a bad thing), and that I do not necessarily have a clear view of what the "real" problems are. In a sense, you could say all this is my fault. :) Part of our discussion in #documentation yesterday included re-emphasizing our need to keep our "government" of documentation at a minimum: keeping the barriers low. To which I replied that we really don't have a "functioning government" in documentation. That's largely what I've been driving for: building a basic set of guidelines (not policies -- again poor choice of words on my part) for people who work on documentation. John Keiser has also reminded me not to forget our current audience of volunteers (please note his excellent reply to Robert Moss regarding W3C standards, a thread that I could not figure out an effective reply to with what we have now). To me, the crying need has been in my eyes since the Nov 9 meeting. I also recall a message I posted at least two years ago to this newsgroup, asking for documentation on JS1.5 -- and Steve Rudman offering me the position of writing it for Netscape. On a more personal note, I turned that offer down because at the time I felt I wasn't qualified. Although that led to me getting an offer to write for Sams Publishing on the same subject several months (you may remember those thick books I brought to your table at this year's party), I am still quite embarrassed by my stupidity back then. It's put a fire in me to sort of take the lead (but not dictate) in getting things done. That being said, I am extremely willing to listen to all comers on how documentation should be done, to the point where I'm begging for feedback. :) The biggest part of what I'm doing, as I see it, is raising questions that probably should be answered and soon. I said earlier I don't think we have a functioning government for documentation, and that I agree barriers should be as low as possible. What's slowing me down, personally, is not having a clear picture of the next steps I should take -- and my colleagues in this newsgroup and #documentation are doing their best to educate me. :) Alex
