[documentation] Contributors to docs need more public recognition

[David Rothstein]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 12:26 pm, Steven Peck wrote:
> -  How will people know they can contribute?  How can we make it more
> visible that they can?  The very first paragraph on the /handbooks
> page, please read it.  It has two links on this information.  This is
> an issue I have been pondering for quite some time but no matter how
> many places we add this information, no matter how many times we tell
> people it seems we always have people that don't see the information.

Putting it prominently on every documentation page would at least
guarantee that anyone who looked at *any* documentation page had the
opportunity to see it.  That is hundreds and hundreds of pages rather than
just a few.  Constant repetition is often the best way to reinforce a
message.  As for exactly why they aren't seeing (or paying attention to or
remembering or believing) the current notice, I would not claim to know. 
I have some theories, but they are just speculation at this point...

> I do not buy the 'what if' guess about how new people might feel as a
> justification to change anything.  I am certainly open to increasing
> visibility for contributors and how to contribute but please, don't
> use 'guesses' or suppositions to support your ideas... [snip] ... I
> have talked to a lot of new people about this and have added/changed
> wording on a annual basis based on these real conversations with new
> contributors.

OK, agreed, although how easy is it to find the right people to talk to in
this case?  Presumably we also want to talk to people who are potential
contributors but have *not* yet contributed, and it seems like those
people might be hard to pick out.  If you know of a simple way to find
them, I'd be glad to talk to a few of them and ask about this particular
idea.

My own story is only one "data point" but it's a data point nonetheless: 
While it's hard to go back and remember exactly what I was thinking a year
or so ago, I strongly suspect that a block like Steve Dondley suggests
would have encouraged me to contribute earlier.  What I can tell you for a
fact is that I had in my head the idea that Drupal was produced by "the
developers", and since I wasn't a real developer (just someone who used
Drupal a bit at work and also as a hobby), I did not feel qualified to
contribute for a while.  I eventually started contributing on the forums,
because I was worried (and still am, occasionally) that I was out of my
league anywhere else.  In retrospect, I knew a lot more than I thought I
did a lot earlier than I thought I did and probably could have contributed
effectively much earlier... *especially* to documentation, where new
people have a bit of an edge (see
http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation).  Now that I am no longer
quite so new, that opportunity is somewhat lost.

--David Rothstein