[Typo3-doc] Future Main_Page

[Sylvain Viart]

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the delay.
Your contribution is very interesting. Thanks.

Peter Kindström wrote:
>> Are you ready to work with this new presentation or you have any 
>> comment about that page and the layout ?
>>
>> What about the structure suggested ?
> Maybe this post is of no use, because it will give an opinion but no 
> suggestions for alternatives...  :-)

Are speaking about my post, yours, or Jean-Marie's message ?

I haven't read any message of «no use» every message carry some content.
More than that every message is communication and the most important to 
keep all communication open. :-)

> I think the new layout hide the most important things - the documents! 

Wrong, what you cite *are* all document ! ;-)

I've exactly designed this page to allow more document to be present.
But the fact you didn't see that, may be a good point for improvement. ;-)

If you are speaking about some special kind of user manual, of course
they are not linked directly from this page because, my goal was exactly
to push document into subsection to keep the main page as clear as
possible.

In fact I've explained all about that in the discussion page.
Have you read it ?

Could you give me some example of document which doesn't fit into the
proposed sections ?

> I see no use for a news column. Not so much happens on the wiki and it 
> would be better to write news in the NG/ML to get some publicity...

Yes, the wiki doesn't have much traffic and have a nice «Recent changes» 
page, but my goal now, is to take over the typo3.org documentation 
sections and anything related to TYPO3 documentation in general.

The wiki should become the knowledge central. The DocTEAM's goal is to 
focus on documentation content. Our member should look for content in 
they every day TYPO3 related activities and start collecting all on
the Wiki.

Who are our members, will you ask ? Patrick may have an answer, Patrick 
? ;-)

I've tried to collect such content with the Profiling page, for example:

http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TYPO3_sourcecode_profiling

But, I've not any real enthusiasm. The bad part of our job. ;-)

So the «news column» should be for every thing about TYPO3 documentation.

For example, if you find a nice tutorial somewhere on the Internet, you 
could write a news item with the link. Or a more important speaking 
example could be, the «Inside TYPO3» manual has been updated recently, 
drop a note in the news and if possible say something about what's new, etc.

You see, my point ? I just want to make the wiki more living and 
friendly, right now. :-)

> I do not think we should encourage different languages on the wiki. We 
> have enought problem getting people to write at all. 

I'm completely at the opposite of your opinion about foreign language.

I've meet many people interested by the documentation, but not safe 
enough about their english to join our effort. But they were ready to 
translate document.

Allowing foreign language is very important to me, because the German 
community has lot of interesting content about TYPO3, the French one 
too. Everything should be collect, no more spreading !

> I think that we start in the wrong end. The DocTEAM first should have a 
> goal and roadmap, then produce some documents and _then_ restructure the 
> wiki.

We already tried this path without success last year. Let's welcome 
information as it comes now. The DocTEAM should collect and present the 
information, encourage using of the Wiki. Let's push the wiki in any 
situation as possible ! And work on the presentation to make it as 
friendly as possible. No more developer only documentation for TYPO3. 
That's the major inquiry about the documentation, right ?

> What we need is a project leader, DocTeam goals and a list of official 
> Typo3 documents that the community needs. Then the list and goals should 
> be discussed with Kasper to get an ok from him.

No, I must disagree.

Kasper has assigned teams, and now we must have the full control of our 
job.

As the Documentation TEAM we must be very open of course, because we are 
communicating ! Suggestions from Kasper are very welcome, of course, but 
we no more need an ok from him. We also tried that way the last year 
with very few success. :-(

Our leader is Patrick Gaumond right now, he has interaction with Kasper 
and other team's leader. It's great because, he has a fresh vision of 
what the documentation could be. He also has a point of view which is 
not too programmer oriented. He is also a bit slow, but that perfectly 
balance with me. ;-)

> [...] and find writers willing to write all(?)  those documents in the list.

Unless you pay them it doesn't seem possible. If we look at «recent 
changes» and document published on TYPO3.org we see:

A lot of document for programmer, almost all written by Kasper himself, 
a bunch of small extension document lost here, and very few involved 
people on the Wiki.

In June and July it was new and a fun toy to test, now the beginning 
enthusiasm is down and very few people are still contributing.

As I've discussed with Patrick a year ago, it's pretty difficult to keep 
people motivated. In open source it's easy to find programmer, not 
document writer. It's question of maturity. ;-) So we are now open and 
encourage any contribution placing it in the good section.

> Today it looks like people just write what _they_ want, and that is ok. 
> But who writes the documents that the _community_ wants?

What the community wants ?

> But of course, this is only my 2 cents!

Ho, don't be too humble, it's worth many more, at lest 150 €. ;-)
-- 
Cordialement,
Sylvain.
France