Submitted for approval. Revisions to the "Helping with documentation" page, located at http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation.

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All you need to do is submit a request detailing the document you would like to update and the changes you would like to see made. If you would like the ability to make those changes yourself, use the same request link. Make it an active support request, introduce yourself, and state that you would like edit permissions granted to the documentation maintainer role. If you would like to take a deeper level of involvement in Drupal documentation development:

ORIGINAL TEXT

Anyone may participate in Drupal documentation development as a member of the documentation team:

Begin by subscribing to and joining in discussions on the drupal-docs mailing list. Anyone can also peruse list archives to get a feel for recent documentation team issues.
Browse open issues in the Documentation project. Here you may also submit bugs if you find errors in the documentation.
Become a doc team maintainer by creating an issue requesting to join and help edit and update the handbooks.
Here are some useful links for helping to maintain the handbook:

Handbook updates: A list of recent changes to the handbook. Scanning this list often will help you keep tabs on what's new, and also help remove any spam.
Handbook comments: A listing of pages with lots of comments. These comments should be incorporated back into the main text, or made into sub-pages, as appropriate.
Most popular pages: these should be given some extra care to make sure they are clear and easy to understand.
Contributing to the handbook: A general overview of the handbook structure and how to help.
For developers: the API documentation is a bit different, as this is auto-generated from files in CVS. To update the description of a file or function, submit a doxygen patch against the core file in question. To update one of the "topics" pages, hooks documentation, or pages like the Forms API reference, edit the files under contributions/docs/developer in CVS.

CommentFileSizeAuthor
Anyone.doc27.5 KBpyutaros

Comments

pyutaros’s picture

pyutaros commented

I should add that the purpose of this request is to address various complaints that it is sometimes difficult to figure out how to edit handbook pages. See these threads for reference (gathered from the first four pages of a search on terms "how do I edit handbook pages documentation where"):

http://drupal.org/node/106309
http://drupal.org/node/105706
http://drupal.org/node/132496
http://drupal.org/node/54607
http://drupal.org/node/108362
http://drupal.org/node/67367
http://drupal.org/node/105915
http://drupal.org/node/6286
http://drupal.org/node/106309#comment-185402

add1sun’s picture

add1sun commented

I actually went ahead and did a rewrite of th Contribute page based on this issue, but I don't want to post my rewrite because I have concerns about having the same information in too many different places. On the one hand it is good to give people many avenues to the same info, but since we can't have one page located in different places, this means we need to remember to update all the pages that have "x" info when it changes. This was a problem that we just had that led to the Contribute page being more generic and pointing to the detail pages rather than duplicating the details since the info ended up getting out of sync.

The entire Contributing to docs section of the handbook has just been recently rewritten/implemented and I think it is a huge improvement. Most of the threads listed with questions on how to find this info were before these new changes in docs and the process for contributing. I think it is best to have the Contribute page point to the handbook docs since 1) it keeps the info centralized for one-time editing and 2) handbook pages can be updated by all doc team members while the Contribute page can only be edited by site admins.

Just my .02 and I'm definitely open to more discussion on this since I know it is not a cut and dry issue.

Also, just a note, please don't attach docs that are in a proprietary format. Not everyone has MS Word.

pyutaros’s picture

pyutaros commented

What is the preferred standard format for edits?

karldied’s picture

karldied commented

I agree http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation needs revision. Since this page is a child page of http://drupal.org/contribute, it is not a handbook page (though I agree with add1sun that the link should just point to the existing handbook page that exactly covers helping with documentation; that the topic should be part of the "About Drupal documentation" handbook; and also, as add1sun said, having the same information in multiple places is bad).

This issue is a duplicate of part of: http://drupal.org/node/115088 which is a Webmasters issue since the page is not a handbook page and since doc maintainers can not edit it (maybe add1sun can take action on it?)

Issue http://drupal.org/node/110955 was also a duplicate for 115088.

115088, the existing issue, suggests pointing drupal.org/contribute/documentation to "Contributing to documentation," http://drupal.org/node/24572, in the handbook.

+1 add1sun's recommendation to point to HB page.

pyutaros’s picture

pyutaros commented

I would also agree with the above suggestion to eliminate the middle page completely. It's one more layer to keep someone away from contributing. It's one more page that duplicates the same information. The edits I submitted attempted to allow you to quickly bypass, but I would have suggested just removing the extra layer if I had thought it would fly. Oh, and what's the standard format for submitting edits to documentation. I really would like to save my next edits in that format and not offend anyone who doesn't use MS Word.

pyutaros’s picture

pyutaros commented

Anything ever happen with this?

karldied’s picture

karldied commented
Status: Active » Fixed

The link on http://drupal.org/contribute/ (the Contribute tab) for 'documentation' with the alias link: http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation/ now points to the "Contributing to documentation" handbook page, http://drupal.org/node/24572/, as suggested. This update was made on March 30 as part of issue http://drupal.org/node/115088/. Issue resolved as suggested. Updating status to fixed.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.