Documentation/Dashboard/Ideastorm

Infrastructure

Ideas for improving the documentation infrastructure. This can be new toolset proposals, reusing existing tools that are not being used effectively, wiki extensions and so on.

MindMap

During the OOoCon20009 Doc presentation, Sophie requested a MindMap extension for the MediaWiki.

Next/Prev Page at Bottom

Pet peeve, here: reaching the bottom of a long page in one of the Guides, and having to navigate back to the top, in order to get to the next page.--TJ 09:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Usability

just a little brain dump:

• wiki documents should be given states (e.g. draft/published, similar to oooauthors, but not identical as in the wiki there is no need to retract a document)
• end users should by default only see published material
• the wiki needs clear entry points and from there a clear and consistent navigation and search
• end users should by default only see documents from their desired language(s) (defaulting to english if a document is not translated)
• Searches, indexes, categories and so on (may be called user space) should reflect constraints mentioned above

Process

Ideas for improving the documentation process.

Documentation Ownership on the Wiki

Use Categories to attribute documentation ownership/maintainers. Non-english content should always be attributed to a NLC Project by Categories.

Other

Other ideas?

Review internal documents?

Some OO.o internal documents, especially specifications, are available, and even sent out, to users. Might some of the authors be interested in our help, with reviewing and polishing (I'm thinking of proof-reading and light copy-editing, mostly)? --TJ 12:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Just some additional thoughts

1. What do we know about our users (in case of documentation - are they called readers?)? Who does need what kind of documentation? Who is satisfied who is not? How could we monitor this 'customer satisfaction'?
2. Would it help to define a (small) set of "top ten" or "most needed documents" on which (updating/translating) efforts should focussed to keep them up to date first (and only later writing all the other stuff) - i.e. the question if priorization would help?
3. How could we organize users/customers to cooperate creating good documentation? By expressing their needs?