OpenSolaris Documentation Effort
20 Oct '05 - 23:41 by benrI've started a discussion in the OpenSolaris Documentation Community about the direction of the docs effort and where we are going. To date the community has been pretty quiet but its time to change that. Lots of us are creating reams and reams of documentation on a daily basis in blogs, on mailing lists, and on websites. I'm concerned about the coordination of these various grass-roots efforts. Many of you know that cuddletech (ie: me) has been producing huge volumes of documentation for a long period of time, and now that I'm blogging I'm doubling the volume of documentaiton I provide every month. But blogs are temporal, at some point they roll off your front page and into a dark and dank archive. I believe that the future is in meta-blogging; online comprehensive indexes of blogged content for easy access.
Currently it seems like we value documentation diffrent: Book? +20. Print Magazine? +10. Online article/website? +0. Blog entry? -10. Maybe this is my imagination, but I don't think this is an uncommon viewpoint. Metablogging can at least bring blogged documentation up to an equal footing with online articles and websites. And when we've done that, we can start horning in various print references as well creating a truly useful resource for end user support.
Some people have speculated that OpenSolaris would never have a large documentation effort like The Linux Documentation Project, but I disagree... I think we already do. In fact, SunOS and Solaris documentation efforts predate Linux itself, we've just never acted as a unified community. Now thats changing... at least, it now can change. And I think it should... and I want to work toward that goal.
If your interested in documentation (read: helping people) then I encourage you to stop by and have a look at the OpenSolaris Documentation Community. Look around and if you have an opinion (and I know you do) feel free to share your ideas with us. The community is still young, so its a good time for crazy and out there ideas of all types as we struggle into this new era of collaboration. The path we're currently on leads simply to external people being able to pair up with a Sun author to work on internal/official documenation, but if we want something more grand, we're going to have to all pull together and point the ship in that direction. I encourage your input! This is only our community if we make it our community.
It looks like you really had a nice time.
wendie (Email) (URL) - 12 June '06 - 21:48
Holla and Happy Thanksgiving.yolonda (Email) (URL) - 13 June '06 - 15:55
This is the coolest La Cocina.travis (Email) (URL) - 13 June '06 - 16:03
I like your website alot…its lots of fun… you have to help me out with mine…jere (Email) (URL) - 13 June '06 - 18:49
Hope you come back soon!!