The components we have to select from when making a new docs issue are a bit off kilter these days. The handbook has changed over time and the components don't match logically anymore. We should map it out with the new book breakdown. I also think we should change the CVS docs to just api.drupal.org since many folks don't know that api docs are in fact in CVS. Or at least do something like api.drupal.org/CVS docs.

Regarding the versioning, we don't have versions in CVS (yet!) so I'm just listing them out. But once we do start to do that how will that effect our issue creation? That is, only some docs will be versioned which would be a good thing to be able to select when making an issue but we need to make sure that version is not a required field since it won't apply to most of the docs. This question is more of an infra discussion so I dont' expect it answered here - just wanted to point it out in relation to my list.

Let's figure out what we want to have and then we can move this issue over to the right queue to actually get it implemented.

Our current list:
Admin Guide
User Guide
Customization and Theming Guide
Developer Guide
Installation
Marketing
Documentation in CVS
Misc

My proposed new list:
Getting Started Section
Getting Started PDF - D6 (coming soon)
Getting Started PDF - D5
Beyond the Basics
Theming Guide - D6
Theming Guide - D5 and lower
Developing for Drupal
Drupal.org Resources
api.drupal.org
Misc

Comments

add1sun’s picture

Dur, btw, yes we can change this ourselves (i.e. site admins can) so we don't need to move anywhere really, just figure it out and sepeck or myself can change it.

aclight’s picture

@add1sun: before you do that, please read this issue: #140989: Renaming components is unsafe. This may not work as you think it will, unfortunately.

add1sun’s picture

The more I think about the actual list as well, I am thinking that using books for components isn't the best move. Firstly, names and number of books morphs over time and secondly, it doesn't really help me narrow my list of tasks into anything meaningful. Project module's native way of doing things is not ideal for the handbook already so I think we should use what we have to make it as useful as we can. I'm thinking that if we used components for types of tasks, that would help people a) identify things more easily and b) find things they want to work on more easily.

I'm thinking along the lines of something more like this:
Draft review
Correction/Clarification
Page placement
Delete comments
Missing documentation
Archive
Vandalism/Spam
api.drupal.org
Misc

@aclight, yeah I am aware of that problem and yes, it would be a bit of a pain, but honestly it is worth it to me to make the docs queue more useful. It is confusing enough for people to use rather software specific things for docs and having components that make no sense is just more befuddling. I'm prepared to move ahead with changing the list once we find a good list that is a more long-term solid list and then deal with the changing of components on the issues until it gets all cleaned up and "righted."

If folks can give feedback on the list to use, that would be great because I do plan to move ahead with it and it would be peachy if we can do it once and not have to move it around in the future.

zirvap’s picture

There are two sides here: What's useful for doc team members, and what's easy to understand for non-doc-team-people when writing issues. Here are some comments from doc team point of view -- if we figure out what's best for us, we can then look at what compromises we need to make for other users' sake.

As a grunt-level :-) doc team member I want to be able to filter out tasks that I don't have permission to do. Those tasks include:

  • Add doc team members
  • Delete pages (I can move outdated pages to Archive, though, so this applies just to spam/test pages)
  • Delete comments
  • Edit api.drupal.org
  • Edit Getting started 5 (and, presumably after a while) Getting started (ie. the PDF-docs)
  • Tasks that require fancy input formats (like #290084: Float images right and comments)

(I think that's all.) How many different roles do these permissions translate to? Which ones should be combined into the same component?

For those things that I can change, I'd like to filter for:

  • Small changes (typos, minor corrections, misplaced pages) - For when I have a few minutes, don't feel like tackling anything big
  • Medium changes (rewrite of a single page)
  • Major tasks (reorganisations, rewriting several pages) - Those issues which need a lot of thought, and input from a lot of people.
  • Doc team processes - these may be small or big, but it's useful to be able to find everything that's about how we do things. (This issue would be one of those)

And of course we can't think of everything, so we'll need:

  • Other (or Miscellaneous) (I think "Misc" may be harder to understand, esp. for people who don't have English as first language)

You suggested "Draft review" as one of the components, I suggest we use "Status: patch (code needs review)" instead, since people may want reviews for a lot of different doc issues.

add1sun’s picture

OK, I redid my list a touch and have thoughts on the others.

Correction/Clarification
Page placement
Delete comments
Missing documentation
Archive (maybe call this Outdated instead?)
Vandalism/Spam (= Delete pages. I prefer identifying what they are and then we can determine action.)
Join docs team
api.drupal.org
Misc (This is simply following what is the default on all issue queues. I'm open to changing it but if it stays the same that will help avoid *some* of the project validation squawking.)

# Doc team processes
Yeah, I like the idea of some sort of "meta" category where we can have procedures and high level documentation issues (like restructuring). Though I also sort of feel like these are not so common and so we could get by with Miscellaneous for those. I dunno.

# Edit Getting started 5 (and, presumably after a while) Getting started (ie. the PDF-docs)
I am expressly not adding anything about this since the current DocBook format/editing process of this section is untenable and can't continue as is. One of the major things on my list to address at the docs sprint in Szeged is how to come up with a workable situation for the "official docs." I'd rather not add a new category that may need to change/be removed a short while later since it will just cause extra project module squawking.

# Tasks that require fancy input formats (Hm, not sure how to keep that short in a way that people will understand. Most people don't really know it is about "input formats" - they just know images don't show up or whatnot. I also think this may happen infrequently enough that Misc works for it.)

# Small changes (typos, minor corrections, misplaced pages) - For when I have a few minutes, don't feel like tackling anything big
# Medium changes (rewrite of a single page)
# Major tasks (reorganisations, rewriting several pages) - Those issues which need a lot of thought, and input from a lot of people.
This seems like a very fuzzy area and doesn't seem like an easy thing to categorize or make clear without sentences explaining them, and that is just for docs team members. People not on the docs team will have zero idea what these mean nor a clear idea where something fits. They might think it is easy, when it is hard and vice versa. I'm -1 on these but open to discussion. We can use the minor priority for small changes.

"You suggested "Draft review" as one of the components, I suggest we use "Status: patch (code needs review)" instead, since people may want reviews for a lot of different doc issues."
Yeah, I removed that one.

zirvap’s picture

I agree with you about the PDFs and about Misc. And I see your point about "Doc team processes" probably being too rare for a separate component.

We can use the minor priority for small changes.

Well, not really. A critical bug might be a 30-second job to fix (say, a missing "not" which changes an important instrucion somewhere), and a task of minor priority might take hours or days. But I get your point that the distinctions I mentioned are fuzzy -- perhaps too fuzzy to be usable.

Some suggestions regarding your suggestions:

  • Page placement --> "Placement and navigation". Remove "Page" to cover placement of whole sections/chapters as well as single pages. It could/should cover stuff like #293491: add project field to handbook pages and #254848: Add translations guide to http://drupal.org/handbooks as well, not sure if "navigation" will say that, or if we can find another, better phrase.
  • Delete comments --> "Advanced docs permissions required". Will cover special input formats, and changing page order, and probably others. This one will mostly be used by docs team, but that's true for "delete comments" as well, and I do think it's useful.
  • Missing documentation --> Maybe call this "New pages to be added" instead. If I've written a completely new page, but want reviews, it's not exactly missing.
  • Archive (maybe call this Outdated instead?) --> Yes, let's call it "Outdated", because sometimes the solution will be to update it, instead of archiving it
add1sun’s picture

Good point on the minor/small thing, but I do still feel that small, medium, and large are too fuzzy and are likely to generate more questions than provide clarity.

Page placement --> "Placement and navigation".
Agreed, good point.

Delete comments --> "Advanced docs permissions required"
Hrm, well these are really site admin perms. I do see where the "advanced" stuff would be a good group. I'd like to really *encourage* folks to clean up comments so I'm partial to that specific, clear, easy to find one, but I can also see just grouping it in. I basically think I'm swayed on that one. I'd like to play with the name though, maybe even just saying "Advanced permissions required."

The "Missing docs" one I did intend for people to report gaps in the docs and didn't really think of reviews for new stuff. Perhaps we could call this one "New documentation suggestions" or something? I'm kinda meh on "new pages" because sometimes it may not be a new page, it could be just adding more info to an existing page or adding a whole new section.

Outdated wfm.

zirvap, thanks a ton for talking this out and bouncing ideas around; so incredibly useful.

add1sun’s picture

Status: Active » Needs review

Here is a new list based on the above discussion:

Correction/Clarification
New documentation
Placement and navigation
Outdated
Vandalism/Spam
Join docs team
Advanced permissions required
api.drupal.org
Misc

zirvap’s picture

Yep, that list looks useful and practical. Thinking about it, I've come to agree with you that the small/medium/big thing doesn't fit in.

BTW, I definitively agree with your comment #3: that's changing the components into something that makes sense is worth some hassle with pre-change issues.

And thanks to you, too, for tackling this issue! Working with the current list of components is a bit like having a stone in my shoe: It's not a critical problem, but it's a steady minor annoyance, and it would be a relief to get it fixed :-)

webchick’s picture

Some feedback on the list in #8.

Correction/Clarification
I would make this "Minor Correction/Clarification" because this would address zirvap's request for a queue of "minor" issues, and most corrections/clarifications are just that. If they're not...

New documentation
I think what you mean here is "New documentation needs to be written" but I can't be sure. What if we called this "Missing or outdated documentation"? This would then double as the queue of "Major" documentation issues which need longer than 5 minutes to fix.

Placement and navigation
Good stuff.

Vandalism/Spam
Good stuff.

Join docs team
There's a nagging part of me that wants this to be a noun to match the rest of the items, like "Docs team join request" (although that's pretty awkward), but I won't lose sleep over it. ;) I would make "docs" into "documentation," though.

Advanced permissions required
This one I don't like. Remember that finding and reporting problems with documentation is in many cases the initial baby step that someone totally new to Drupal will take as a contributor. How is a person who might not even know what permissions are yet going to know what on the site requires advanced permissions? Try to leave these components as task-based as possible.

Since "Vandalism/Spam" and "Join docs team" also need advanced permissions and are already two separate items, I think making this into discrete "Comments need incorporating" or "Styling problem" whatever you're explicitly trying to say here should be used instead.

api.drupal.org
Please see #296364: Proposal: Move all api.drupal.org issues to the Drupal project (rant moved to new issue to avoid de-railing this one ;)). In short, I don't think these issues belong in the Documentation queue at all.

Misc
I agree that Miscellaneous or Other would be better. I don't think we really gain much from leaving it the same, since all of our other components are already going to be different. One more validation error ain't gonna kill anyone. :)

jbrauer’s picture

-1 to Advanced permissions required
OK maybe it's -2 one for the name and one for the concept. As has been pointed out it's redundant in designed function. More importantly it is based on the perspective of the submitter. For someone who is not a member of the documentation team any page edit would fall into this category.

Getting Started
This seems to be worthy of another thread. There is a real conflict between having some of the key documentation be unmaintainable by the majority of the documentation team.

Misc/Other
+1 for "Other Documentation Issues" ... It's hard to be too explicit.

add1sun’s picture

Correction/Clarification
Not all corrections/clarifications are minor, nor easy. If we say that these are easy ones then where do big ones go? I don't know that folks will think new docs or outdated is exactly what they should put it in. I also still feel like asking folks to determine what is minor, average or major is hit or miss. I bet most people have no idea if it is minor or not. It might be minor if you know the subject but it might be major if you have to research the subject before you can correct it. Other than typos and bad links, I think degrees are fairly subjective and so a thing to avoid.

New documentation
Yeah, so I had this as Missing documentation but then zirvap brought up that this can be used not only for people reporting missing docs but also for issues where new documentation is being created. I suppose that if I wrote up some new docs that putting it under missing docs would be OK, but I agree that it isn't quite as intuitive for me to say "hey, I have new documentation" and then mark it as missing. So I dunno, I'm not wedded either way on this one. Anyone else have strong feelings or arguments? :-)

I prefer to keep the Outdated as its own category since that can end up being different stuff altogether, as in Archiving. We don't need to update all old docs.

Advanced permissions required
OK so if we reverse the Advanced perms (and that is a waffley one for me) then what are the main tasks folks need under that? It originally started as Delete comments and I feel that is the major use case. I also realize that the advanced perm of weighting is now also accounted for in the Placement and Navigation one. Do we have other specifics that we need? I'm fine with just adding Delete comments and letting other random site admin tasks getting shoved in to Misc.

api.drupal.org
Yeah, I am on board with that. That would mean getting that issue resolved before this one then. Not a problem per se, but I guess I'll need to beat the drum on that one hard to get this issue moving in a timely manner. ;-) We could technically make the other changes in this queue, leave the CVS component for now and then switch it later, depending on the outcome of the other issue.

Misc
OK, OK, I concede. ;-) Then I like being explicit with "Other Documentation Issues".

Getting Started
That is not even worthy of an issue right now as far as I'm concerned. This needs to be completely rethought and we need to come up with an actual workable plan through discussion. We need to hash this out on the docs list. This is one of the top issues I have that must be dealt with/kicked off during the DrupalCon docs sprint. So, let's not even go there in this thread. ;-)

webchick’s picture

Don't have brain-space to respond to the rest atm but:

api.drupal.org
Yeah, I am on board with that. That would mean getting that issue resolved before this one then. Not a problem per se, but I guess I'll need to beat the drum on that one hard to get this issue moving in a timely manner. ;-) We could technically make the other changes in this queue, leave the CVS component for now and then switch it later, depending on the outcome of the other issue.

I'd leave the CVS component in over postponing this issue, personally. As much as it's an itch of mine, it doesn't make sense to mire down this simple efficiency issue over something that's a community problem and bound to get drug out in discussion.

esmerel’s picture

I'm ok with the list, I think. It is something of a fuzzy line (what isn't?) between 'a piece of info is missing' versus 'there's no docs for this at all', but I think it'll be ok. And if it turns out it's not, I am quite sure we'll hear about it later!

I definitely agree with separating archive from outdated. Again, it's a fine line, but I can imagine a number of cases where it's either easier to just scrap a page all together and start a new one with a new release of whatever code.

zirvap’s picture

Getting API docs over to a queue with people who can actually fix it seems like a very good thing. Doubleplusone to that!

I guess I'll throw in the towel on Advanced perms :-) I agree with reverting it back to add1sun's original suggestion of "Delete comments", and I agree that page order fits in navigation. Doing stuff with input formats is pretty rare, and can go to Misc/Other.

#10 webchick

I would make this "Minor Correction/Clarification" because this would address zirvap's request for a queue of "minor" issues, and most corrections/clarifications are just that.

Well, I kind of changed my mind on that. Because "major"/"minor" is another axis, really -- we can have major/minor corrections, major/minor navigation tasks, and so on.

I don't have strong feelings on "Missing" versus "New" -- both are OK.

#14 esmerel
I would prefer having just one component for "Outdated". Splitting it up in "Outdated" and "Archive" has much of the same drawbacks as "Advanced perms": The person reporting it won't know if it's easier to archive or to rewrite -- that's a call that the person who're going to do the job must make.

add1sun’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

OK, so here is the list we have:

Correction/Clarification
New documentation
Placement and navigation
Delete comments
Outdated
Vandalism/Spam
Join documentation team
Documentation in CVS
Other documentation issues

I'm going to implement this today and send an email out to the doc team list and make a forum post about it so everyone realizes we know about the validation error problem. One immediate task I'd like to work on once we change them, is to start at the beginning of the queue and reset as many of the issues as we can. I'd rather "front load" the change work than just do it as we work on the issues because while we may know what is going on it will likely scare off people who don't understand what's up.

Thanks to everyone for chiming in and getting it all hammered out. w00t!

add1sun’s picture

Component: Misc » Other documentation issues
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

The change is in and forum post/email done.

betz’s picture

Project: Documentation » Drupal core
Version: » 7.x-dev
Component: Other documentation issues » documentation
zirvap’s picture

Project: Drupal core » Documentation
Version: 7.x-dev »
Component: documentation » Other documentation issues

This issue belongs in Project = Documentation", and not in "Project = Drupal, Component = documentation". Please read #296364: Proposal: Move all api.drupal.org issues to the Drupal project and this issue for more info on components for docs issues.

Anonymous’s picture

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

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

Wolfflow’s picture

This thread is also part of Addition of section with "Issue report Component" - description

As of #4 from @add1sun
to thread Addition of section with "Issue report Component" - descriptions

Every ones is invited to propose suggestions, drafts etc.
Please post here your contributions.

Thanks