Wiki Freeze Tomorrow

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 09:38:32PM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> John J. McDonough wrote:
> > The wiki freeze is scheduled for tomorrow.  If you plan to add some
> > release notes content to the wiki, time is getting short.

To be clear, this refers only to the documentation beats used for the
release notes:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_Beats

> > If there are items you think need more content, but you aren't
> > comfortable with the wordsmithing, leave some content in the wiki and
> > the Docs folks will be happy to clean up the prose.
> > 
> > Following the wiki freeze we still can make changes in the xml, so if
> > something comes up that should change the release notes, email myself or
> > Ryan Lerch and we will make the changes
> 
> That's not really acceptable. A reminder should have gone in much
> earlier. There is lots of content that needs to be updated and a day is
> just not enough.

You are right, there was a lapse in project management reminders.  The
release notes coordinators are leading for the first time, and us old
timers didn't give them good advice about keeping eyes on the
scheduling and nag mail.

Sadly, there isn't much slip room in this schedule that I see:

http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-11/f-11-docs-tasks.html

If you get a change in to the wiki by 2100 UTC on Thursday, you give
the Docs people very little time to review and convert it to XML for
the translation deadline.  I'll ask the release notes team if they can
make the freeze 'slushy', that is, soft and willing to take as many
last minute changes as they can.

Regardless, the wiki freeze is more "we are ignoring your changes and
won't guarantee they make the Preview Release notes."  Put the changes
in anyway.

We go through this every release.  Waiting until the last minute to
put "lots of content" in to the release notes beats is also
unacceptable.

Docs has been asking for more beat writers and content for some time.
We need real, raw content from the people who know, and we don't get
it. Then at the last moment, a trickle turns in to a flood.

Feature pages are a great start, where they have release note
information.  But we all know that the features are just a small
sampling of all the changes in the release.

Let's ask the Docs folk to be more consistent with the nagging, but
the developers and packagers need to fill more roles providing the raw
content, doing it early and right.

-Karsten, a Docs contributor
-- 
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener
http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
AD0E0C41
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