[drupal-docs] Round 4 of documentation sprint Admin help:merging into the handbook

[Kobus Myburgh]

What I read makes a lot of sense, but keeping track of all the tasks as they are listed here on the mail becomes a bit tedious, and unmanageable, especially if you're out of the office as much as I am.

Maybe we should think of maintaining the core of the ideas that were discussed in one way or another? If you use, for example, a forum with restricted access, where you can have content threaded (good!) and filtered (as the forum topics are editable) (as opposed to non-threaded in your mail client, or only threaded and not filtered with mailing list archives) wouldn't it be easier to maintain?

The feasibility of this idea is highly into question, as I can't see a single person weeding out irrelevant information from the mails and posting them to the site, but, I would just like to hear some opinions and thoughts about this.

Regards,

Kobus




>>> cel4145 at cyberdash.com 5/24/2005 9:17:08 PM >>>
This sounds like the beginning of an interesting proposal. But let's 
start by forming a documentation team (two people as coordinators) to 
prepare a proposal for reorganizing/reworking that entire section. Right 
now we have a proposal based on the viewpoint of one; one main goal of 
the documentation teams is to present to the larger community a proposal 
that represents the viewpoints of two people.

Meanwhile, at this moment, the goal of Kieran's project is to move the 
admin/help into the handbook and make sure that non-empty pages exist 
for the links in the admin/help which connect to the handbook. The 
documentation team can then decide on the best method for organizing the 
entire section at a later time and move this pages again if they see 
fit. Otherwise, the alternative is not to go forward with the admin/help 
integration for now until a documentation team can put together a 
proposal for doing the entire section and we can discuss it.

However, Kieran is willing to manage the move as part of an effort to 
get the admin/help submitted into Drupal core. This is his main priority 
at the moment. Since Kieran is prepared to do this now, and no one was 
forthcoming in forming a documentation team in the last few days for 
restructuring this section of the handbook, I made a decision to let him 
go forward with this project since he's committed and has people willing 
to assist. I've been assisting as well and would invite everyone else to 
join in.

So to reiterate, yes, these are interesting ideas. And two people 
can/should form a documentation team to restructure this section of the 
book. But at the moment, Kieran needs feedback based upon his goals. 
Let's stay focused on the smaller picture now and save the bigger 
picture for when we have at least two volunteers ready to move forward 
with the larger project.



puregin wrote:
>      I'm a little concerned about making the Administrator's guide even
> more confusing than it currently is.
> 
>      I'm thinking of the new admin help as being similar in spirit
> to Unix 'man pages', and I'm imagining collecting them all
> into something which would essentially be an appendix -
> used for reference.
> 
>      I think that the existing content is sometimes of this format,
> other times not.   I think that this existing content can be
> coerced into more of a 'cookbook' format.
> 
>     Here's the current structure: I'm going to associate chapter
> numbers, to make discussion easier:
> 
>     Administrator's guide
>       1. Introduction
>       2. Installation
>       3. Configuration
>       4. Blocks
>       5. Drupal modules and features
>       6. Upgrading from previous versions
>       7. Migrating from other weblog software
>       8. Backups
>       9. Best practices
>     10. Troubleshooting FAQ
> 
>       I think of the Troubleshooting FAQ, Upgrading, and Migrating
> sections as appendices, because they would likely be
> read by only a subset of readers, and each of these sections
> stands alone.
> 
>       I'd like to see the Admin help become an appendix also.
> Existing Admin help documentation could be put into a
> 'Versions prior to 4.6' section of this appendix.
> 
>       I propose an organization something like this:
> 
>     Administrator's guide
>       1. Introduction
>       2. Installation
>       3. Configuration
>       4. Day-to-day administration
>            ...
>            Backups (was 8.)
>            ...
>       5. Cookbook
>            ...
>            Best practices (was 9.)
>            ...
>     A1. Drupal modules quick-help
>            Core
>            Contrib
>            Versions prior to 4.6
>     A2. Upgrading from previous versions (was 6.)
>     A3. Migrating from other weblog software (was 7.)
>     A4. Troubleshooting FAQ (was 10.)
> 
> 
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