This is a meeting of the Editorial Board - it runs online from January 1 to January 31. Undecided motions are carried over to the next month. Passing a motion requires 50% plus one of the current members. Members who miss two consecutive meetings are no longer considered current.


Last meeting: Editorial Board Meeting 2007 12
Next meeting: Editorial Board Meeting 2008 02
Members Current for this meeting(7): dthacker, chibaguy, kernel22, marclaporte, mlpvolt, ricks99, xavi
Passing or defeating a motion will require 4 votes this month.


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Motions Passed Last Month

None

Motions Defeated Last Month

None

Old Business

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Clarify who is active on current EB Meeting

Motion: Include in each Editorial Board Meeting a clear statement of who is considered active each month, so that everybody gets clear idea of what has been successfully passed and what not.


Discussion:

  • Based on the last three meetings, I've compiled an active EB member list for this month. dthacker
  • thanks David! :wink:

In favour: Xavi, dthacker, mlpvolt, ricks99

Opposed:

Language Standard for Screenshots

Motion: Create a documentation standard that all screenshots should be created in the language of the documentation.

Do we want to settle on a single common language for screenshot examples on doc.tw.o, or allow any language the author happens to be using? More for consistency than anything, is there any policy or practice that is used for documentation language as a baseline? By and large, most folks accept that documentation will be written in english first for most things since that appears to be a common denominator. The great thing about Tiki is that there is built-in language translations - unfortunately that does not apply to screenshots. I was looking at the documentation for a feature called Contribution, which seems pretty cool. I could read the english version of the page, but the screenshots were in what I guess is Spanish since xavi appears to have written the page (and the feature?). I don't understand a lick of Spanish, so it's hampering me from understanding the examples completely. My question is do we want to settle on a single common language for screenshot examples on doc.tw.o, or allow any language the author happens to be using? (xavi, would love to hear more about this feature...I might be able to use it at work)


Discussion:

  • I've previously tagged some non english screenshots as needing updates. I'm also grateful for any help we get with docs. dthacker
  • Xavi: Yes, Kerrnel22, screenshots should be in the same language as the text.In my case, by the time I wrote Contribution documentation, I just had time to add some screenshots in Catalan, the ones I already had for my own documentation. Later on I made some more in English, by Wikisym2007 time... I have to find some time to fetch them, and replace the old ones from Contribution page.
    update Jan 30th: sorry, I didn't have in English to replace the ones with some Catalan text on them. We need to re-generate scenarios in plain english, and make screenshots for them... (not so urgent for me, there are other areas more urgent to improve documentation, afaik... kernel22's proposal, what are your questions about this feature? maybe you want to play with it, ask questions, and I'll do my best to answer them to you. I always thought that while learning a feature step by step, I could make some basic task oriented help about the feature... (that's how I've done some of the docs in here - e.g. live support. So do you feel like doing so with Contribution? Basic English explanation can be found at the paper at Wikisym07: http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/_publish/dePetro_WikiSym2007_ContributionsInCooperativeWork.pdf
  • mlpvolt: xavi handled it just right, i think - added whatever screenshots he had and then tagged for need screenshot if necessary.

Documentation Page Formatting (kernel22's proposal)

Motion: Use the example below as an "Information Sub-Section on all documentation pages.

This really stems from 1.9 vs. 1.10. I would like to propose an "Information" sub-section on each doc page relating to features/mods/etc which would contain sub-headings with related information like: 

!!!!Import forums
Blurb about what the feature does.

!!!!!Change Log
''Outlines significant changes in the appearance or behaviour of the feature...''

1.9.8.3 - Introduced.
1.10.0 - Added ability to import directly from another DB server.
1.10.1 - Able to now migrate phpBB3 forums.
1.11.0 - Removed SQL dump import option because seldom used.

!!!!!Known Issues
1.9.8.3 - Only works with mysql for sql dump import.

!!!!!Examples
blahblahblah....


Discussion:

  • You could make that "Starting Now we do it this way", but resources for feature archeology are usually not available. dthacker . Fully agree: xavi
  • mlpvolt: there ought to be a comprehensive list of templates at documentation templates - people should feel free to add and update those - we are not highly disciplined about using them at present - maybe there is a way we can prompt for this?



In Favor:

Opposed: dthacker, Xavi (but if "Starting Now we do it this way" statement is considered, I agree, and I guess, dthacker also)

Documentation page formatting(ricks99's proposal)

Motion: Use for documentation page formatting something like the example shown here

Discussion

ricks99: Here was my proposal for redesigning doc pages from a while ago. I'm not 100% pleased with it, but I think it does a good job making it easy to find the key information for a given feature (i.e., which Tiki version, required permissions, etc.).

Xavi: as a General Idea, I like it, ricks99. But I'm scared of the work of reformating that part of every single page.... Moreover, shouldn't we use somehow the tracker info here in doc.tw.o that Marc Laporte created and many have been updating for all features?

  • Which tracker are you talking about? Are you suggesting using trackers in place of wiki pages for features? How would that work? (ricks99)
  • I (xavi) mean creating a tracker to store all the metainformation of the features, and retrieve whatever information for that feature using trackerlist plugin using filtervalue or similar params. Similar to how marclaporte has been using trackers on dev.tw.o to show the bugs related to that feature. We would show the metadata related to that feature... However, this is a bunch of work, which I can't do myself (I can't find enough time to even easier things...)

mlpvolt: again documentation templates is the process imo.


In Favor:

Opposed:

Screenshot Tagging/Captioning

Motion: Tag or identify with a caption the version of Tiki each screenshot is from with the goal of the screenshots matching either the current release, or the current release candidate, whichever is more imminent.

In the case of today, we would try and get all screenshots current as of 1.10.0 until we come up with a 1.10.1 down the road. The Change Log proposed above will fill in the blanks. Maybe also have a "-HEAD" version of the page that talks about and documents changes to an existing feature that are in development in the head branch. When the time comes, those details can be easily incorporated into the current release page. Obviously, if the feature doesn't exist yet, then instead of ahving a -HEAD version (for example Contributions-HEAD), then it'll just be the name of the feature (Contributions) and in the Change Log section we'd have "1.11.0 - Introduced". I think we need to document new features that are being developed, but keep it separate from what is current so as to avoid confusion.

Discussion:

  • All screenshots should have a standard caption including version. We could add an "under development" tag as the equivalent to HEAD.(dthacker)
  • I personally think that having a HEAD version of any doc page publicly available is dangerous. The HEAD version is not easily available. Too many newbies are going to ask... Why is the doc page showing me 1.10, but I can only download 1.9.9??
    ricks99
  • in fact, they can indeed download 1.10 (or HEAD) at their own risk, from Download page (-> http://dev.tiki.org/Download). Mmmmmm, I like the idea: some people might like the idea of using 1.9.9 in themeantime but knwoing that in the next version (1.10 in this case) this or that feature or enhancement is already coded and working... (specially if we as community take so long between releases of new stable branches...) (Xavi)


In Favor: dthacker, xavi

Opposed:

Forum/comments noise

Motion: Don't use or promote using doc.tw.o comments and forums by end-users to post questions and request help, but to questions and help related only to documentation issues.


Is anyone else concerned that that the forums (and comments feature) on doc.tw.o are being used by end-users to post questions and request help? I am afraid that the primary purpose of these doc pages are becoming clouded with things like this and this. If the purpose of doc.tw.o is to provide factual/complete/correct information, then IMHO these questions just add noise. If the forums are meant to be a way to discuss the doc pages themselves, not the actual feature then a note needs to be added to the edit page informing user that they should post their questions on the regular tw.o forums — not here. (ricks99)

In Favor: ricks99, xavi

Opposed:

New Business

Use category for EB Meetings

Motion: Assign new Editorial Board Meeting pages to the newly created "Editorial Board Meeting" category, so that users can watch all old and new pages through watching just this category (http://doc.tiki.org/tiki-browse_categories.php?parentId=10&deep=off, whenever we upgrade to Tikiwiki 1.10, or course) .


See previous months meeting minutes to see the discussion where this motion come from, if you like.

In favor: xavi, ricks99

Opposed:
__

Next meeting: February 2008