Bringing in more people

[rho]

This entry isn't really going to be saying anything concrete. It's mainly just me putting some of my thoughts onto pixels. I'd very much appreciate any thoughts that any of you have on this, though.

At various points, from when I first took over the documentation project to this morning, I've had various people expressing an interest at getting involved with FAQs/copy/proof-reading/whatever and I've had to turn them down, for one reason or another. It breaks my heart a little bit every time I've had to do that, because I really firmly believe that everyone has something useful to offer and everyone should be able to concentrate.

The problem, for now, is that expediency is trumping pretty much all other concerns. We have a bunch of things that we need to get written by Open Beta, and getting them written is my priority. Paradoxically, asking more people to contribute at this point would be counter-productive to this goal. Time spent training people up to write in our style and to use our tools would take away from the time we have to actually write things.

In choosing my teams, one thing I was looking out for was people who I thought would be able to get writing with minimal training: people who were self0sufficient in learning new skills, for instance, or people whose natural writing styles mostly closed matched the Dreamwidth style.

Fortunately, writing documentation is a lot like writing a book. It's impossible to ever finish. There'll always be some wording that could be made clearer, some feature that isn't documented properly, or some new way of presenting things. No matter how good our documentation is, we'll always be able to make it better.

As we move on after the Open Beta launch, I want to try to bring as many people as possible into the process. The development team are doing a wonderful job of getting new people involved and training them up (dw_dev_training for instance) and I want to use what they're doing as a model for what we can do over here.

One of the problems will be that we don't have the same tools as the devs do. We don't have any nice mechanism for people to submit patches to update site copy or FAQs. We have just two options: either we can say "hey, I think that this should say this instead" or we can put it actually live on the site. This is less than ideal.

In the long-term, we're going to be scrapping the existing FAQ system and translation system and replacing them with new, better systems of our own devising. One thing that I'm keen on working into the new system from the start is some decent form of version control. I want for us to be able to make changes and have them sitting in the back-end where we can look at them, and then to be able to put them onto the live site when we're happy with them.

For now though, that isn't an option, so we'll have to figure out some other way of doing things. One possibility is to let everyone who's interest make suggestions for additions and improvements, but instead of just saying "yes" or "no" for us to then work with you to let you know why we think it's a good or a bad idea, how you can improve your suggestion, and so on. That way, hopefully, we'd be able to have people improve, and eventually reach the point where they'd be the ones who are giving the advice and making the actual changes on site.

I'm not really sure what the best way to try to organise this will be, nor even if it's going to be a good idea to have any sort of formal organisation at all. I just know that the general idea of bringing more people into the fold is one I'm committed to.

So what do you think? If you're currently on the team, how would you feel about helping to train up new people? If you aren't currently on the team, what would be most useful to you and make you want to get involved?

Comments

[zvi]

As an outside observer, it sounds like what y'all need for an intermediate staging area/training ground is a wiki

[ephemera]

hmm - could be because I'm not super-familiar with wikis as spaces for team interaction, but I'm not quite seeing why it's obviously *IT*. I can see how the wiki could be used as a repository of policy guides / final rulings on terminology / 'how to' guides, and that kind of thing, (maybe also as a 'holding cell' for copy to be reviewed before it's set live, although in terms of being able to easily see/contribute to/discuss the evolution of the text I'd default to a DW com rather than a wiki), but I'm not seeing it as a *training* solution - surely something more conversation-focussed - a chatty DW group, semi-official mentors on hand to review copy, that kind of thing? Or am I totally missing the point?

[stultiloquentia]

Is this as good a place as any to say, "Add me to your volunteer list"? I can't code anything more complicated than CSS/XHTML, but I'm pretty good at words -- writing, proofing, whatever. I'm all yours, and easy to train. Just point me in the right direction and say, "Assimilate!"

Also: wiki. Yep.

[hatman]

Yeah, I'm not much for Wikipedia, but the Wiki format seems to me to be well-suited to the task at hand.

In any case, thanks for the explanation. Makes sense, and makes me feel a bit better. :)

(And as for you, Internal Editor... Yes, this is a post about editing, but you don't have to jump up and down over every typo or misplaced hyphen.)

[sine_nomine]

Rho, thanks for all your hard work!!

I have zero interest in writing but I'm a proofreader and would love to help out in that arena, if such skills are needed.

[ladyvox]

When you mention the "translation system" are you then talking bout how the site code translates in whatever it shows on the site, or are you talking about the actual language translation system that lj has in place currently for getting language specific pages (or however you guys are going to set up such a system). I have done my fair share of translating english-dutch on LJ and if you guys are planning on offering DW into multiple languages as well I'd be very willing to help out there.

I would love helping out with a project/things that I totally dig. :) I am an avid gamer and can't help but throw myself up for some extra tasks for the guild(s) I am in as well, be it setting up and admining a forum online or just by keeping track of whatnot in game or adding/editing info on the eq2 wikia for instance. /smiles I guess I just like to be a bit more actively involved in stuff that I enjoy on a daily basis, then to just be a user/member. I do think I have what it takes to work in a team and while I am not a programmer/developper I do know how to work with codes and sorts. I think I do anyway ;-)

As for what would be handy to have as reference for new team members.. I'd have to think some more about that.

[chasy]

I'm okay with helping people proof - I've not done any site copy and possibly, in the beginning, I'd need someone to help ME but if site copy needs more trawlers, I'm willing to step up to the plate...but I'm also all for showing someone how to proof. :)

[denelian]

i think i am seeing something, but maybe this is covered by the Wiki resolve; to whit, how do you get various people to do different tasks, not overlap on some and totally ignore others?

i have a (stolen) novel solution. if you have ever read Irregular Webcomics, the webcomicartist used to do, and now does a different, "volunteer webcomic"
he basicly pooled the volunteers (by type - writer, artist, colorer, letter-er, etc) and set up a rotation - there were like 200 writers (that was the only group i was in) and there was, IIRC, a single webcomic scheduled a week... so he generated the list (by timestamp on the email, but however) and just had the rotation go through: comicwriter1 wrote the first open script, comicwriter2 wrote the second, etc.

it sounds really simplistic, and i only suggest it because i am guessing you will have *lots* of volunteers, and a lot of times simple solutions are perceived as being *too* simple. if you are as inundated as i expect, you'll totally need to both ride herd on us and pass things out easily. i am sure there are multiple ways to make this sort of system work specifically for you guys - i'm just trying to give you a basic look.
and hey, if there is a *better* way, it would be useful to learn that, too lol.

all that said, i'm a decent proofwriter and am a Communications(Journalism)/Political Science major (senior year). use away :)

(as a sorta personal question; do you think after you guys are more up-and-running you would be willing to try an internship sort of thing? i ask because i am disabled, hip displaysia, surgery didn't work - i have issues sitting up for more than about an hour, and all the internships i can find require 6-8 hour workdays *in* the office, no working-at-home sort of things, and i cannot do that sort of work setting. i am not really asking, asking, right now; i am throwing out an idea, expecting you [the entire team] to not even really think about for months, just let it bubble in your collective subconscious 8-) )

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

Heya! I'm coming to this project a LOT late. But I want to be part of the team! Copywriting, copyproofing, documentation-writing - anything involving the creation of words and sentences and paragraphs and so on, I can do and do well. I'm a Masters student in English and Creative Writing right now, and I can match any writing tone. I can't tell from this post and the other post that's tagged "volunteers" in this comm whether you are NOW accepting more people onto the team, or whether you WILL be when the site launches into Open Beta on the 30th, but it doesn't matter much to me anyway: I will be done with my academic semester on the same day that Dreamwidth launches for membership, and I would *LOVE* to get my hands dirty helping out at the same time that I'm getting my yet-to-be created DW user account up and running. I'm a fast writer; I have tight syntax, adaptable diction, and (almost) perfect punctuation, and I take critique very readily and eagerly.

Also I like kittens. ♥

Contact me here or at red nigh ten gale at gm a il dot co m!

[hekaterine]

I'd like to help, but I'm just another user with no experience.
Maybe in the future.
You're doing a great work. Just wanted to say that.

[rian_aphasia]

If there's a list anywhere with names for when you need more volunteers for copy editing, I'd like to be on it. I'm a reader, so stuff like bad explanations "ping" for me, and I have good spelling and grammar in non-casual writing (I almost went to school for English Language and Lit). I notice directions and explanations that are ableist and plain don't help for people who use sites like this differently than a lot of us, and I actually rewrote directions and usage guidelines when I worked in the Feminist Studies Library at UC Santa Cruz. I was thrown into a supervisory role, with very little training, within a month of starting at the library, so I'm used to having to find answers on my own. While I enjoy and find a group-dynamic helpful, I don't rely on it to do my part well.

[earenwe]

To be honest, I just like to help. And I like the idea of a wiki to use as a place for ideas to form and grow before actually going elsewhere to take their semi-permanent place. While wiki is nice, I'm not sure that it would fit the layout that I've seen (nice and clean) so far of the site.

A training team, I think, would be preferable, so that everyone is on the same page as far as what things are permissible and what are not, etc.