Are there any non-technical jobs...

[John]

Kevin Mulligan wrote:
> Ditto.
> 
> What I've done so far is working on cleaning up the Wiki, with the aim 
> of making it understandable to first time users seeking help. Just a 
> little editting here and there, spelling changes, formatting changes, 
> etc. ((BTW, should words be spelled 'Americanized' or 'European'? For 
> example I came across "customisation" and changed it to "customization". 
> Hoping this is a good change and not a bad...))

I think most countries do not follow American practice. I've noticed 
more likelihood of writings in Debian adopting British spelling.



A couple of things crossed my mind. I don't want to distress anyone, but 
technical writing is a specialist skill in itself.


An approach that might work:

Technical people who think of it add info and proofread info to check 
its accuracy.

Probably, suspected inaccuracies should be run by a comittee (ie an 
appropriate list) and/or annotated. Otherwise I can see two techos, each 
thinking they're right, making changes one way then the other with a 
fair chance of the result being wrong:-)


Less techo people proofread for clarity, and similarly complain about 
what's wrong and/or correct the text. This is also a good way to learn: 
_test_ the info.


People with a good grasp of English edit for clarity and use of English. 
If Canonical has preferred styles, try to follow them:-)


At some stage, I hope that the Canonical folk will pick it up, order it 
into user and techo docs.

Writing good documentation is enormously difficult. Those who know the 
subject best make too many ill-founded assumptions about what their 
readers might already know, and of course those who know what the 
readers need to know don't know either.

Then, when someone writes a set of instructions, someone else needs to 
test those instructions. A couple of weeks ago, I assembled a barbeque. 
The problems began with an incomplete parts list, continued with 
different kinds of bolts not distinguished in the instructions.... 
Clearly, thrown together (likely by some Chinese given it was made in 
PRC) and not tested.

I recall curtain tracks are rather fun too:-)


Have I missed any group out? If I have, do what you think you can do best:-)

> 
> There is a Desktop team, a Document team... perhaps a part of the 
> Document team would be simple Wiki 'maintenance' and making things easy 
> to understand for new users (such as myself)?
> 
> Just throwing some ideas out...

Don't throw them all out; some are worth keeping:-)