Promoting new members

[Jim Campbell]

Hi All,

I have to get ready to go to work, but wanted to give at least a little bit
of a reply to the group.

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Dougie Richardson <
dougierichardson at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Evening all,
>
> Right I need to get this off my chest.
>
> Every week in this list there are two mails I can count on receiving -
> people requesting to join and people who requested expiring.
>
> There are, really, only a handful of people committing documentation
> to the ubuntu-doc package. It has been suggested that our tool chain
> is too complicated. I have suggested ideas to improve this on a number
> of occasions - they might be crap, because no-one likes them but at
> least they're ideas!
>
> There is undoubtedly a problem in keeping volunteers and yet the only
> time that we have a consistent discussion is when there is a proposed
> organizational or structure change. We are excellent at discussing the
> minutia of organizing both its structure and layout.
>
> If you think I'm being overly critical or ranting then that's fine but
> I feel very strongly about this.
>

I know that a good deal of our discussions as of late have been focused on
some of the the more technical bits, but I think we'll get more of what you
are looking for at our team meeting. We didn't even have a team meeting at
all during the Jaunty cycle, did we?

If anything, I'm now concerned that we'll try to cram too much into our
first meeting, and it will go on for too long. :) We've got a lot to
discuss. I think some of it is just pending that first meeting. I've been
holding at least a few ideas back until we get Jaunty out the door.


>
> I for one am not happy working in this team at the moment and looking
> at the way the xubuntu-docs guys have been conducting their business
> recently I don't think I'm the only one.


Hey, I'm a "xubuntu-doc guy!" :-)  The status of this has been simmering on
the back-burner for the past few weeks. I'm sorry if anything I have
personally done has irritated people. Please just know that I'm not
comfortable with the situation, either, and look forward to getting things
resolved at our team meeting. Also please keep in mind that any mistakes
I've made haven't been because I don't care, but are just because I'm still
learning. I want the doc-team and the docs to be good just like the rest of
us. I don't like having to wait until the doc-team meeting to discuss some
of this, but we've certainly given it a good shot over the mailing list, and
I just think we'll put all our cards on the table and will come to some kind
of an agreement at that meeting.


> I also notice there are a
> number of prevalent, long term committers from previous cycles who
> haven't been heard from in a while and our solution? To propose their
> removal rather than contact them and find out if there is an issue.
>
>
I must've missed this. If you're talking about the suggestion to remove or
archive personal branches that haven't been touched in a long time, then
maybe it would be a good idea to contact the people who haven't worked on
the branches in a long time. I think the main ubuntu-doc page could probably
still stand to be cleaned up a bit. If you're talking about something else,
I'll need to take another look at it.

Sorry that this is all the time I have to add on items for now. I think
there are some good opportunities to make some improvements on stuff in the
future, and that the team is motivated to produce good documentation. I
don't see anyone on this list who doesn't care about the success of the
overall project, and who isn't motivated to learn. That's a good thing -
it's something that indicates we can build the team and build good docs.

Jim
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