Ara Pulido sent this message out to the Xubuntu-Users mailing list the other day, and I thought it was worth passing along to the greater Ubuntu community. Testing for the Xubuntu 9.10 release candidate is going on now, so please read the email below and help out if you can. Thanks!
Posted on Oct 20, 2009
Posted on Oct 12, 2009
Top 50 technical writers on the web + Xfce and Xubuntu doc updates
This site lists who they’ve identified as the top 50 technical writers on the web, which I stumbled upon via a link from Scott Nesbitt’s blog. While this list will certainly provide me with additional documentation resources, I notice a dearth of open-source documentation names in that list. No Shaun McCance, no Emma Jane Hogbin, no Matthew East, and certainly no one with a name as cool as Milo Casagrande.
Paul Cutler, a member of the GNOME documentation team, has said that he wants to make documentation cool again. He used some different phrasing (ok, he actually said, he wants to make it “sexy,” again, but I don’t really feel like going there), but what I take his comment to mean is that he wants to make documentation something that people see as technically innovative and relevant to users, even if most users instinctively turn to Google as their first line of support. After all, Google’s search results don’t just grow on trees – the content that comes up in all of those search results has to come from somewhere. Why shouldn’t the answers to user questions come from carefully prepared and researched documentation?
I don’t say this to denigrate blog posts, forums, or IRC support networks – that’s where users get most of their support these days. Comprehensive documentation has its place, though.
With that in mind, I’m making initial, but steady progress on the Xfce 4.8 documentation, and really want to improve the Xubuntu documentation. (I’m actually a bit ashamed of its current state given the beauty that is the rest of Xubuntu 9.10.) I will be at UDS (though, unfortunately, only for the last two days), and look forward to meeting with fellow doc-team members, and anyone else who would like to discuss documentation and translations.