[documentation] Fwd: Documentation Team: 'Doc survey results' at groups.drupal.org

[Addison Berry]

> add1sun has posted a Discussion at http://groups.drupal.org/node/21339
(To see the charts and find the attachements, go to the g.d.o post.)

>
> Doc survey results
> ---------------
> A few weeks ago I put up a quick survey about Drupal docs. It was  
> very "by-the-seat-of-my-pants" but I just wanted to start getting a  
> feel for where people are coming from and give the community an  
> opportunity to talk about docs. It wasn't scientific and it wasn't  
> even a "good" survey. I am definitely not a survey expert. Luckily  
> some folks have volunteered to help me make future surveys better,  
> but I'm still happy with what I learned from this one. I wanted to  
> share some basic stuff that I found interesting from the responses.  
> I don't have a lot of time to tinker with stats and such and I've  
> also attached the results in a CSV file so anyone else that wants to  
> play with them, can have fun. My main interest in this survey was to  
> read what people would say about docs when given an anonymous text  
> box and how people think of Drupal docs. OK, so anyway, here are the  
> goods....

> As a reminder, here are the 5 questions:
> 1. How long have you been using Drupal?
> 2. Are you a member of the Drupal documentation team?
> 3. Do you feel that you have the skills or meet the requirements to  
> help with Drupal documentation? If not, please explain what skills  
> or requirements you feel are needed.
> 4. In what ways have you contributed to Drupal documentation?
> - Edited existing documentation on Drupal.org
> - Wrote new handbook page(s) on Drupal.org
> - Wrote or edited help text in Drupal core
> - Provided a patch for API documentation (api.drupal.org)
> - Created an issue in the Documentation issue queue
> - Participated in a Drupal documentation meeting or sprint
> - Participated in a documentation mailing list discussion
> - Created documentation made available on a site other than the  
> Drupal.org sites
> - I have not contributed to Drupal documentation
> - Other (with room to explain)
> 5. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have about about the  
> Drupal documentation team and the maintenance of Drupal documentation.

> Things that stuck out to me
>
> Real quickly before I head into a few, brief points, I should note  
> that this survey wasn't widely broadcasted. I posted to the g.d.o  
> front page and spread the word on Twitter. Since it was not a well- 
> planned survey I didn't feel like I should do a front post on  
> Drupal.org. I plan for future surveys to be more thought out and get  
> wider exposure. Just over half the responses were from people with  
> over 2 years of Drupal experience, so the numbers may look a bit  
> lopsided. That said, I found it interesting that just because people  
> have been around for a while does not necessarily mean that they  
> have any better grasp on what the doc team is about or how they can  
> get involved.
> It is no surprise that people who are newer to Drupal don't feel as  
> qualified to help with documentation. I think many of us know this  
> anyway, but this is a major assumption that I want to change this  
> year. New users are a critical piece to good documentation and we  
> need to encourage more people to engage sooner, before they get  
> "Drupalized."

> Aside from folks not feeling that they know Drupal "well enough,"  
> other common blockers for folks were language or time. Again, not  
> terribly surprising but areas I'd like to chip away at as well.  
> There were definitely a lot of responses where people want to help  
> but can't see a clear, simple way to get started, or something that  
> doesn't end up consuming too much time. Coming up with more straight- 
> forward directions for helping with docs is a high priority for me  
> right now and I hope that the doc sprints I am attending, chatting  
> with all sorts of people about docs, will help clarify this.

> Another interesting thing was that percentage-wise there was a  
> roughly consitent number of folks across all experience levels who  
> weren't sure if they were on the doc team or not. Since we opened  
> the handbook last year, we have been trying to redefine what the  
> "doc team" means and I dare say we aren't doing a horribly good job  
> right now. The general idea is that there is no special team you  
> need to join with fancy site permissions to be on the team. One  
> thing that has done though, I think, is maybe blurred it so much  
> that people aren't really sure where lines of authority or access are.

> So, these are some quick thoughts but I invite everyone to look  
> through the results themselves and continue this conversation. I did  
> a few basic charts, which may or may not be useful (but they look  
> perrrty ;-)). There are two CSV files attached as well, results-doc- 
> survey.csv is the raw data from the survey site, and basic-stats.csv  
> were the little mini tables I used to make the pie charts. (Note  
> that I did redact some personal info to maintain anonymity.) You  
> should be able to open the CSV files in most any spreadsheet  
> software, like Excel, Numbers, or OOo Calc.

- Addi