DocumentationTeam

Revision 37 as of 2008-08-06 16:29:15

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Introduction

The Documentation Team is a group of community volunteers who manage the documentation that ships with the Ubuntu operating system, as well as the community-developed documentation on the documentation website at https://help.ubuntu.com/community.

Our work consists of writing, editing and updating the system documentation for Ubuntu, as well as gathering the helpful advice from the Ubuntu Mailing-lists and Web Forums for all to use.

New contributors and members are always welcome. People are needed mostly for writing and editing, but there are many other ways of making a useful contribution. For example, simply pointing out errors (such as typos, grammar and spelling, and technical errors) is an extremely useful way to help.

Contact

  • Most communication happens on the Documentation Team mailing list.

  • Join the #ubuntu-doc IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

  • A list of current Documentation Team members is available on our Launchpad page.

How to Contribute

The Documentation Team is always looking for new contributors. See below for a list of ways that you can help out.

Join the mentoring programme

A great way to get involved with writing documentation is to join DocuMENTORS, our mentoring programme. An experienced member of the Documentation Team will be available to help you get started and to answer your questions.

See Mentoring for more information.

Improve the documentation wiki

The documentation wiki at help.ubuntu.com is where the bulk of the Ubuntu community documentation is kept. Anyone can edit the wiki, which makes it an ideal place to start contributing.

  • Fix spelling and formatting errors
  • Simplify the structure of long pages
  • Organize untidy pages so that they are easy to read
  • Fix broken links
  • Add new documentation to the wiki

A list of pages which have been identified as needing improvement can be found in CategoryCleanup. Also, see the Wiki ToDo list for a list of high-priority improvements which are required.

Before you start contributing to the wiki, you should read the Wiki Guide for information on how to edit pages correctly. See the Wiki Cleanup page for tips on cleaning-up wiki pages.

Check the system documentation for errors

System documentation refers to the help files which are pre-installed on Ubuntu. Click System -> Help and Support to view the system documentation.

An important (and easy) way of helping out is to proof-read the system documentation and report any errors that you find.

  • Follow the instructions given in the documentation to see if they work and if they make sense
  • Click links to make sure that they still work
  • Report spelling and grammar mistakes, mis-translated words and typos
  • Report documentation that you think is missing or inadequate

See Technical Reviewing Documentation for information on becoming a technical reviewer/proofreader.

You can file bug reports on Launchpad if you find a problem. See Reporting Bugs for more information on how to file bugs correctly.

Alternatively, you can make suggestions on improving the documentation on the Documentation Team mailing list.

Import documentation from the forums

The Ubuntu Forums contain a wealth of helpful guides on hundreds of different topics. It would be useful to store a lot of this information permanently on the wiki. You can help out by taking guides posted on the forums and turning them into wiki pages on the help wiki.

  • Identify useful documentation on the forums
  • Enhance existing wiki pages using information from the forums
  • Create new wiki pages based on forum guides
  • Ask the authors of guides for permission to use their guides on the wiki

See the Forum Importing page for guidance on how to import forum guides correctly.

Work on the system documentation

The Ubuntu system documentation is produced in the DocBook XML format and is hosted in the Documentation Team's bzr branches. You can help out by maintaining and improving the documentation.

As well as the general system documentation, there are also several guides which are maintained by the Documentation team which you can contribute to. Check the projects list below, and go to the Getting Started page to learn more.

Projects

The Documentation Team maintains the help system for the Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu desktops, as well as specific guides on Ubuntu Server and Switching From Windows. New versions of these guides are released with each new release of Ubuntu, and these are translated through the translation tool Rosetta in the same manner as all of the other applications in Ubuntu.

For a complete list of these projects and the community members who are currently maintaining them, see our Projects page.

You can see the currently available documentation here:

Launchpad Membership Policy

Members of the Documentation Team on Launchpad are those who have upload rights to the documentation repository. Rights are granted by current Documentation Team administrators after some substantial contribution to the project has been demonstrated by sending patches. You can apply for membership on the team Launchpad page.

Meetings

Ubuntu Documentation Team meetings are announced on the ubuntu-doc mailing list and normally take place in the #ubuntu-meeting IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. You can find the agenda and time for the next meeting at the DocumentationTeam/MeetingAgenda page.

Summaries from previous Documentation Team meetings can be found on the MeetingLogs page.

Sub-pages


CategoryDocteam CategoryUbuntuTeams