I have a to-do idea which I might volunteer for. As a newcomer to Drupal, I spend hours if not days browsing this site every time I have a question. I find that many times the same questions are asked over and over. And some very kind people take the time answer them. The quality of the answers are uneven. Sometimes the question gets an answer that is perfect, complete and clear. Sometimes the question gets an answer that's confusing. This may relate to how much hurry someone was in, how much experience the answerer has, a version change, etc. Sometimes you'll see a little debate in the trail of comments about whether a solution will work or not.
Two examples of commonly asked questions are:
1) how to use taxonomy and the various add-on modules to create breadcrumbs a certain way
2) how to replace the default logo.
I would guess there are over 100 comments on each question. I am planning to put together a list of bookmarked comments that I think best answers each question. (As a newcomer, my judgment could be wrong.) I am thinking about contributing that back to the Drupal community. I browsed through the instructions about documentation. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but I don't think I'm familiar enough yet with the Drupal site to figure out the best way to implement something like this in a way that would not be too time-consuming for me.
If any of you want to suggest a particular and relatively efficient way to implement this, please point me in that direction. I could also set it up quickly as on a separate site which would be a list of marked comments for me. Again, I just want to help this community, which is terrific and I don't want to offend anyone. If you don't like anything I've said, please be polite.
Thank you,
ae2005
Comments
FAQs/tutorials?
Two examples of commonly asked questions are:
1) how to use taxonomy and the various add-on modules to create breadcrumbs a certain way
2) how to replace the default logo.
Rather than links to assorted comments, how about distilling them into a readable how-to guide for each of those subjects? Maybe with some screenshots, even? I would think that an organized collection of those kinds of articles would help new Drupies a lot. I'm not experienced enough to contribute to your #1, but I could certainly do #2. I'll bet lots of people here could write up guides to various popular tasks.
Perhaps they could live in a new section of the Handbook called "Examples and Tutorials" or similar...? They could be grouped into categories and rated Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.
Or a subsite, where these how-to articles would be blog posts subject to moderation?
yes, distilled
Todd,
Thank you. Yes I agree, and that's what I meant. The way I thought of it, the guide would have 3 components for each questions.
1) question
2) distillation of answer
3) links to the most relevant comments so that someone can go and read more about it.
We would identify that this specific question/answer has not been certified as correct by the developers, and then after the core developers certify it we can label it as such. It sort of becomes a moderation queue that is viewable by the public and that way it would reduce time pressure on the core documentation team.
Thank you so much for offering to help. You are right. This could probably be written fairly quickly if people pitch in.
ae2005
Beginner section a good idea
Todd,
I also really like your idea of 3 levels. So often, the answer is "install this module/path" and we could have a beginner section that says "this is impossible with the core drupal/civicspace installation without modification" and then point them to a more advanced solution.
I'd hesitate to call it tutorials, which might imply a degree of completeness.
I think of it as frequently encountered problems. FAQ would of course come to mind as the title. In my perspective, FAQ would be written by the core developers rather than a newcomer like me.
ae2005
Great minds think alike :-)
I've been thinking along the same lines myself. What I see as the main problem with the docmentation from a newcomer's point of view is that the handbooks are organised by implementation method: Core modules, contributed modules, php snippets... But as a newbie I know what I want to do, but I haven't the foggiest idea about how the solution is implemented, or what it's called in Drupalese. A huge reorganisation of the handbook is probably neither possible nor desirable, but a section like this one could hopefully help at least some of the users who get lost in the current handbook.
My thought was to create a page called HOWTO: Beginner's guide, to go alongside the HOWTO: Advanced user's guide. In that page, I'd make a brief intro, pointing to Terminology and Troubleshooting FAQ, and listing each howto on a separate page under that. I'd go for short and sweet descriptions, mainly aimed at pointing people in the right direction, and linking heavily to other parts of the handbook.
Below is an example, going for the most basic question of all, which nevertheless gets asked every now and then in the forum (I'll have to look at an out-of-the-box-installation to make sure what I'm writing below is correct):
HOWTO: Add contentIn the navigation menu, choose Add content, and choose the kind of content you want to add. In an out-of-the-box installation you can choose between the following content types:
If you install modules which use other kinds of content (for instance images), these will also show up in the same place.
sitemap for newcomers
zirvap and everyone,
what great links! I've never found terminology because it's under installation under introduction, and I had someone else install it for me. Likewise, I never found the troubleshooting FAQ because it was under theming and customization and I had not begun to customize. what we need is a button on top at the front page called links for newcomers. (I like newcomer rather than newbie since newbie is often derogatory.) (see wikipedia entry)
that link would go to a page that would have
terminology
glossary (non-drupal) see node 43476
FAQ
and more
I'm also going to start tagging really useful comments with a label like howto or clearanswer so that they can be found through a search.
thank you very much for your input! we need to figure out who's on the documentation team.
ae2005
usefulcomments free tag
I'm using the free tag usefulcomments and usefulcommentsae when I find or create summaries of comments. (I hope I'm using the term "free tag" correctly.) This hopefully will enable people to search on the term "usefulcomments" to find summaries of comments. We can all use our username on a second free tag so that people can search for free tags created by a particular person who shares their level of experience, judgment, etc.
here is an example of the free tag as I've used it.
http://drupal.org/comment/reply/30886#comment
ae2005
Tagging is accomplished
Tagging is accomplished using a taxonomy or category terms to mark/categorize posts. Such as the Drupal version numbers that it is now posible to select when creating a forum post or handbook page.
Drupal 4.6.x only had 'free tagging' capability, the ability to enter a tag at post creation with a contributed module. Drupal 4.7 will have this ability built in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy
-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide