[documentation] Contributing Book and IRC meeting

[Addison Berry]

Crud, I originally sent this earlier in the week but sent form the  
wrong email address so it didn't go through....

Hey folks,

Sorry I've been off radar for a while now. I am currently on the road  
but want to get geared up to hit the ground running on the new  
Contributing book once I settle back in at home. I wanted to update  
folks on what I've been doing/thinking as well as set up a time for an  
IRC meeting.

IRC MEETING
My schedule on weekends is pretty bad right now. I'd like to schedule  
a meeting for the weekend of August 9/10. I'm also open to a weekday  
but not as many people can make those meetings. Please let me know if  
you prefer the 9th or 10th and we'll set a date and time at least a  
week in advance. (And this time I'll make sure I show up. ;-))

NEW BOOK
I have created a new top-level book page at http://drupal.org/node/281873 
. It is not on the main handbook landing page and will not be until we  
get it fleshed out. You can see a list of all the top-level books  
though by just going to http://drupal.org/book and it is listed there.  
Note that it doesn't need to be named "Contributing to Drupal" and I  
have started an issue in the queue to get that hashed out: http://drupal.org/node/285811 
.

The page consists of the overall outline we determined several months  
ago with links to each main section's issue in the queue. If you are  
inspired to work on this book, please have discussion and do as much  
of the "grunt" work in the issue queue and not on the Handbook page.  
What is the "grunt" work I speak of?

GRUNT WORK to GET THIS DONE
For each section of the new book we need to:
1) Identify existing pages/sections that can be moved in (e.g. under  
Talk tot he Community we have "IRC". That would map to the existing  
page, "How to use IRC effectively" at http://drupal.org/node/108355.)  
In the issue queue for each section we need a list of the outline  
pages with a link to the existing stuff listed. If they are not an  
exact match, but close, add them to the list too. Similar to http://drupal.org/node/240251#comment-796689 
.

2) Once we see what we already have, we can identify where the gaps  
are and what new content needs to be written. This will mostly be  
landing page type things.

3) Make the top-level book page into a "landing page style" for the  
Contribute tab.

3) Pick a day when we can go through and rearrange the book according  
to the link outlines we've built.

We need to research and list all of this stuff before just moving  
things since we want to cause as little confusion for users as  
possible. By sussing it all out ahead time, discussing any tricky  
issues that come and then making all of the moves in one day we can  
minimize the endless shifting sands effect.

THE BIG MOVE
We need to actually move all of the handbook pages to their proper  
location in the new book. This will need to be a limited number of  
people (like one or two) so that there isn't a) mass confusion and b)  
stepping on toes. Once the move has been made we will add the new book  
to the Handbook landing page and make it the target of the Contribute  
tab.

We will also need to announce it on the mailing lists and forums.  
Probably the biggest headache for users will be shifting all of the  
CVS stuff to the new book so I want to make sure we give people as  
much information in as many channels as we can. We'll still miss lots  
of people but we can at least make a best effort. Obviously we will  
also need to be liberal with links from the older, established books  
to the new book as well.

I am going to start working on this in earnest next week, once I am  
home from travel. I would really like to get at least the first "big  
move" and publishing the book done before DrupalCon Szeged. Then we  
can recruit and have lots of cleanup tasks for folks to dig into  
during the Docs Sprint at the end of the conference.

- Addi


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