Archive:Why join the Docs Project

Why Join the FDP?

The Fedora Project is looking for more writers.

You don't need to be a great writer. That's why we have editors.

Look upon it as a chance to improve your writing skills while contributing to the Fedora community.

If this intrigues you at all, please read on.

Maybe you've wanted to be involved with Fedora but don't know a way. Or you want to expand your involvement. Consider writing or editing for the Fedora Docs Project (FDP):

• Have closer contact with your favorite developers and projects.

• Become or further expand into being a subject matter expert for your favorite topics.

• Gain reputation within the community.

• Learn to be a better writer, editor, and technical reviewer.

• Become associated with a subject you have a professional interest in; this is "writing as a career builder."

What might you write about?

• Be the subject expert for a part of the release notes

• Installation or configuration of any software or hardware under Fedora

• General or security best practices, even abstracted from the OS but still relevant to Fedora.

• Whatever interests you.

What is there to worry about?

"The toolchain is hard."

If you don't know 'DocBook', it's definitely time for you to learn. Meanwhile, project members have volunteered to help anyone get their document converted into 'DocBook'. From there, you can teach yourself as you continue writing and maintaining. So in short, you don't need to know 'DocBook''' -- at least not right away.

We are using the Wiki at http://www.fedoraproject.org/ and remain open to further toolchain/publishing considerations. Heck, if you want to get fedoraproject.org to host a blog to help publish tips-n-tricks, that would be a great Fedora documentation effort.

"The amount of content is a lot to write and maintain."

The FDP is geared to small how-to and tutorial documentation. If you know your subject area, you can likely write a usable draft that is 80% complete content within a few hours. Give it a try.

You can contribute to a larger guide, such as a chapter or even a section. This is currently true for the release notes, and works for any longer, guide-length works.

If you are writing about what you know and already use, then the odds are that you continue to use it in the future and can easily maintain a document on the subject. This is the difference between Fedora docs and the kind of documentation that Red Hat Enterprise Linux does: massive guides are hard to maintain, while small tutorials and how-to docs can be practically painless to maintain.

"I hate writing."

We need technical editors, especially if more writers start joining. We may need your help in an area you know about already, in terms of the toolchain, automation, CVS management, project management and so forth.

Since effective communication is a part of all of our lives, perhaps this is an opportunity for you to get free editing and writing advice. This is especially helpful for non-native writers who would like to improve their English writing skills.

Interested? Drop a note to fedora-docs-list redhat com and tell us whatever you want.

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