GSoD'20 Discussions

Django Internals Mentorship
1

Hi Everyone,

I am Hitesh Kumar from India. I would like to participate in GSoD’20 under the Django organization. I have been contributing to the documentation of several open-source organizations in the past. Also, I am writing my own blog for some time now recording my daily progress. I would love to know more about how I can start contributing to Django Documentation for GSoD’20. This is my first time participating in GSoD, so, not much experience about how things work out here. So, I am seeking for help regarding the same. If someone can guide me along it will be really helpful for me.
Also, I have experience in making user-friendly contribution guidelines for some of the projects in past so, I would love to use my past experience in this year’s GSoD.
Hoping to get some help soon.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi!

The issue here is that folks report finding the Contributing Guide a bit daunting. So we’re looking for ideas to make that better.

We’re hoping someone with a Technical Writer type background may be able to suggest ways to make it more addressable.

https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/timeline

3

Thanks for the reply @carltongibson

I am interested in making the the Contributing Guide a lot less daunting :sweat_smile:
So, where and can I start contributing regarding this. Also, I have some ideas to make it a bit user-friendly so, should I discuss my ideas in the forum or with the mentors?

Thanks & Regards

4

Hi @HeroicHitesh. Happy to chat here.

TBH I’m hoping for some guidance on how we might proceed: We’re not really technical writers as a group: the contributing guide is great in it’s way, but it is how it is because that’s how it’s become. We need a fresh take, clearly, but I’m not sure what that is (otherwise I’d suggest it myself.) I hope that makes sense. :slightly_smiling_face:

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5

Thanks for explaining the issue @carltongibson
I had a detailed overview of the Documentation and some of the features which I thought were missing were there but not visible on the home page of Documentation.
IMHO we should,

  1. make FAQs and Search Documentation feature more visible on our home page.
  2. transfer some of the documentation which can be better covered in FAQs from Documentation to FAQs and vice-versa(i.e., remove FAQ if documentation suits it better)
  3. Also, we can add a separate tab for Tutorials which consists of tutorials that are included in the documentation. This will help in shortening the documentation size.
  4. The documentation should only have the functions/methods and what they are supposed to do.

What are your thoughts on this?:man_shrugging:
PS- I am not sure if I was clear enough so feel free to ask any doubts you have.
Thanks

6

Not sure about point 4, which doesn’t seem related to the contributing guide, but the other points seem reasonable. They’d need fleshing out in detail for the actual application but I think that’s assumed right?

7

Actually, in the flow of writing, I forgot that we only need to modify Contributing Guide and wrote about modifying the whole documentation of Django😅
So, point 4 is invalid.
Thanks for pointing out.

Also, can you explain the fleshing out procedure like what more details are needed? Do we need to add samples of suggestions, screenshots of expected o/p, or something else?

Also,

actual application

here means the application/proposal sent on the opening of the GSoD’20 student application period?

8

Yeah… TBH I don’t know more than you do: this is our first year for SoD.

I’m sure you’ve seen it, but, the guide for Technical Writers is here: https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/tech-writer-guide

9

Yeah. Actually i skimmed through it earlier. On giving it a second read, I understood your point so, it seems to me that documentation part is fully on me and you can help me understand the project/code which needs to be documented under GSoD’20.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Together we will complete this project for sure.
So, till the application phase opens there’s not much to discuss or is there?:confused:

10

Happy to discuss ideas but once you have the idea, yes it’s guidance from the TW that we’re hoping for.

We’ll help with any technical questions, yes.

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