Once more unto the breach, dear friends

[rho]

Open Beta has arrived, I've had the 3 days of sleep that I needed to recover from the insane rush to get things written in time, I've looked on in awe at denise and mark who were in even more of a mad rush than I was and haven't hadn't a chance to slow down since, and I'm thinking it's about time I started the documentation train rolling again. So, on with the motley, viva the mixed metaphor, and away we go!

Stuff that needs doing:

• There's still some feedback in recent posts here that need dealing with.
• We need to set up a proper process for people to report issues with site copy and documentation and get it set up.
• There are still some outstanding code issues that need fixing. The most pressing ones that I can think of are bug 703 and bug 816 (end user related) and bug 723 (admin related).
• At some point, we also need to start thinking about how we're going to tear out the existing documentation system and rewrite it from scratch so it better suits our needs. That's one for the future, though.
• The few bits of FAQ that didn't get finished off before Open Beta need finishing. These bits were generally down to the people who were working on them coming down ill at at a bad time, so I'm hoping they'll be able to finish them soon.
• I also want to completely redo the paid accounts FAQ, since it was thrown together hastily in a "we need somewhere to put this information up now if not sooner" sort of way and it shows.
• There are a lot of guides that need writing beyond the three we have in place now.
• We also need to start thinking about the KBs and how we're going to do them.
• (Aside: for those who weren't here when we got sarted, the plan was to have a three tier documentation system: FAQs would be in a simple question/answer format, Guides would take a take a topic and discuss it in depth and could be read without any specific question but with a desire to learn about some feature in general, and Knowledge Bases would be more like a complete user manual with just a large information dump.)
• We need to go through everything that's been written so far and check for consistency in naming and terminology, etc.
• I want to go through the FAQ (and guides) and in all cases where there's a reference to some text that appears on site, I want to replace the hard-coded text wit a reference to the translation string so that if we change the site text, the FAQ will still stay accurate.
• I want to coordinate with the accessibility team to make sure that we're being as accessible as we can. We've been trying to avoid visual language, use alt and title attributes, etc. but it's not something that a lot of us are used to and I know there are places where we could do better. There are also some parts of the site that are really hard to document in a non-visual way because the pages themselves aren't designed well for accessibility.
• We'll need to coordinate with the support team as well, to check what sort of documentation they need to do their job properly, what sort of questions they're getting asked frequently. I suspect we'll want to have at least one person acting as a liaison between support and documentation, though I'm not sure about that yet.
• We need to work on training up new people, teaching them our writing style, etc. This includes figuring out what process we're going to use for this and on making sure that we have good internal documentation for people to learn from.

Up until now, I've been focussed on getting us up to this stage and hadn't given all that much thought to how we were going to move forwards from here. I've had some thoughts, obviously, but a lot of things are still up in the air.

What I'd ideally like to happen would be for everyone interested to identify something that they wanted to work on and then go and do it with minimal intervention from me. I am a fundamentally lazy person, and am at my happiest when things get done without me having to lift a finger. :)

What I need from you for now:

• For people on the team already, what (if anything) are you currently working on?
• For anyone wanting to help, whether already on the tea or not, what would you like to do, and what help or guidance would you need to be able to do it?
• People who aren't already on the team but want to be but don't know what they want to do, please tell me so.
• People who are on the team who are willing to help hold hands and train up new people, please tell me.
• If you have any thoughts on how best to do any of the stuff that needs doing, please let me know.

Once I've got feedback on this, I'll start formulating a Grand Master Plan for how we can move forward. It may or may not involve shark-mounted lasers.

Comments

[florahart]

Do you at this point want comments on FAQs that have problems which are not so much wrong as weird? I was looking for something earlier and ran across a couple of things (in faq 18 and 119).

[delight]

I am not yet on the team, but I'd like to be; I'm happy to do anything you need doing! I don't think I'd be as good for in-depth knowledgebases as I would be for FAQs and guides, but I'll be done with my entire term paper in about three days and will then be eager for things to write – anything you can teach me to do I'm happy to do.

[ephemera]

question : is site copy vs faq still a useful division of the teams? (ditto site copy vs faq vs editing, although I can more easily see the utility of 'generate new thing' vs 'polish existing thing')

I have no immediate idea what I should/could be working on (- apart from maybe copying into comments the email-to-self I have of things I have thought while looking at the FAQs, which I haven't done because I don't want to tread on toes in the faq team.) Transfer to the editing team, I guess, as I don't feel like I know enough detail to generate guides / faqs? Sweeping for terminology, naming, and trying to focus on accessibility sounds both manageable and never ending :)

I have thoughts / questions about getting and responding to feedback from users about the site copy and FAQ, but I'm not sure I can pin them down in words right now, but one of them is:

Do we / can we get access to the search text people use on the site, when they're searching the 'faq' set? I suspect that would be useful in seeing what people are finding themselves needing to know (both topic and terminology)

(How might feedback from the support and abuse teams filter back to docs? Do we want a formal-ish PM-direct-answer system, or to invite users who spot things that are wrong / unclear / could be better to post to / comment to a community or wiki where the discussion is publicly visible? How does the existing wiki fit into the future plans for the site documentation/planning/KB?)

[wintercreek]

I am not on the team but would like to help! I am an awesome proofreader (for both grammar and content/clarity), if I do say so myself. So if you need beta readers, please count me in.

I could probably also help in other ways, but I don't know off the top of my head what they might be. Ask and perhaps I'll do it!

[bibliofilen]

If you need any help translating things into Swedish later on, I can do that. Native speaker with both English and Swedish at University.

[ryan]

Currently, there's no plan to make dreamwidth.org available in multiple languages. LJ tried it, and has largely failed horribly at the task, as most languages are very out of date, since stuff needs to be re-translated every time a feature is changed or added.

[theresa]

Not part of the team but am willing to help out around here. I like that this place is still small and has more opportunities for users to give input and assist.

[katieastrophe]

For people on the team already, what (if anything) are you currently working on?
Not much - spotting mistakes in the site and fixing them, like the missing 'm' from team in your next bullet point ;) and being around IRC so that when someone goes "is there anyone from site copy around?" I can try and help out.

I'm willing to train new people but haven't a clue how to.

[gramina]

I'm not on the team, but I'd be happy to help as much as possible. I've been working as a technical writer since about 1990, I'm a decent editor but a better writer, and I'm definitely *not* a good copy editor. (I know good copy editors, and I ain't one.) I haven't been doing much exploring yet on "how to do what" here, which in some ways may be an advantage -- at least, I've found that coming to something without an existing idea of how it's supposed to work can be really helpful.

[lacey]

I haven't forgotten about my telling you I was interested on being on the team. I still do want to be, but right now with offline life being so hectic, I cannot realistically commit to anything. And I'm sorry about that. As soon as things start to slow down I'll ping you, just don't know when that will be.

*cheers from sidelines*

[rainbow]

Not doing anything the past couple days because I hit a bad relapse, but I'm hoping a couple days more of aggressive resting will see me once more into the fray. I do have the question I sent you, but if I don't hear back I can try tackling something I don't have any questions about *g*

I really wisht here was a way to use IRC that didn't involve, you know, things moving on the screen faster than I can keep up. I want to play! *stomp*

[batdina]

I have two or three FAQs that I'd like to add (they weren't desperately needed so I didn't do them when I was practically unconscious). But I'm out here ready to write guides if you'd like me to.

[sine_nomine]

Would really like to proof... I know how hard you've been working and also know how fast you likely typed the above... but I caught at least two typos and that was just scanning what you said. Certainly it's possible that errors have crept into documentation and FAQs and the like, as well.

Also would love to find something on why my dates appear in European format and how to change that, but that likely belongs elsewhere and not hijacking your questions/requests/etc.

[zarhooie]

I'd be happy to be a support/doc liason, if that is needed.

[onceamy]

Hola!

I'm not on the team, but I'd certainly love to be! I'm a proof-reader by interest, and have wiki experience (I'm on the OTW Documentation committee, if that's any help), and would be willing to be a Support/Documentation liaison or a liaison for the Accessibility committee. I can offer advice on documentation in an accessible way, since I have previously worked on issues in a similar vein.

[hatman]

I'm not on the team yet, but I can write, I think. I can also do copy editing. (For example, pointing out that the missing M here: "whether already on the tea or not".)

Not sure exactly how much help I could be. I can only explain what I understand, after all. So what I'd mostly need is source material... which comes down to documentation, I guess. I'm not really sure how the current process works, though.

Basically... I'm willing to help in any way I can, but I'll need guidance. Also, I'm not much of a programmer. So I don't think I'd really be able to help document the more technical stuff.

That clear enough for now?

[pinikir]

I would love to help out in anyway possible

[snakeling]

I'm working on and off on the relationship guide, mostly jotting down ideas, because I'm still not sure how I'm going to organise it. And I'm having a hard time writing it without referring to LJ, too.

For the KB, what about a Wiki? Maybe only open to people who have demonstrated that they know what they're speaking about, though that would create a lot of work for admins (and probably outcries of elitism, as usual).

[ladyvox]

Not on any team but I would definately love to help improve and build-out Dreamwidth to become even more awesome then it already is. I could see myself being useful helping with supportrequests, proofreading/editing/polishing FAQs or other documentation, or what ever it is you guys need help with that I have some knowledge of (hence, I won't suggest putting me to work on the side code ;-)).

I have been poking around on the support board for a bit, and am planning on continuing to do this whenever I have time.
And I keep telling myself to pop by on IRC but while I have been around on the internet since like '93 and have seen/used/ditched a lot of communication tools online, I am a complete and utter noob when it comes to IRC.. /blushes

[havocthecat]

I want to help! I just don't know where to look to find out how to get started. :( Or what needs to be done, what I can do, and how to apply. Possibly I'm just missing it. Entirely.