Subject:
How to get volunteers (was: LDP In Progress)
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
16 May 2008 05:28:42 +0100
Message-Id: <20080516043717.GD2251@davespc>
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 03:21:52PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting k stenerud ####@####.####
>
> > Is this right?
> >
> > On http://tldp.org/authors/inprogress.html it says: Last updated: March 4,
> > 2005
>
> I can't address that,
Seems like no one is tracking our "in progress" docs. I've also
noticed a few cases where someone posted a question on discuss and got
no replies. Historically, this is about the lowest point in LDP's
history, although we are still accepting docs and revisions to
existing docs. And we're still trying to keep spam off the mailing
lists, etc. but not with the degree of effort that we should.
> Quoting Machtelt Garrels ####@####.####
>
> > I did not keep the review stuff up to date, because I have virtually
> > no editors to help me, so stuff gets reviewed if I have a little time,
> > which is nearly never, and in a very subjective way.
>
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 03:21:52PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> I can handle the copyediting part of it, on an ongoing basis, going
> forward. (I'm already the main copyeditor for _Linux Gazette_, and it's
> something I do well and pretty quickly. I don't _always_ have time, but
> mostly I do.)
>
> Looking at http://www.tldp.org/authors/inprogress.html, which I must
> sheepishly admit I haven't glanced at for a while, it looks like David
> Horton's "LPI Certification Self-Study Guide" is ready for copyediting
> -- and it's not clear to me that any of the rest of them are. Is that
> correct? If you can confirm, I'll be glad to do English-usage / grammar
> / spelling / punctuation checks on it right away. (That's the "language
> review" stage per
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LDP-Reviewer-HOWTO/languagereview.html ;-> )
Since we are very short-handed, I don't think we are following the
Author Guide very closely. I suggested a sampling review where one
just takes samples and if they look OK, the howto passes. I also
wrote a short author howto but while people on the list seem to think
it was OK, it never got onto the site, even though I submitted it.
The Author Guide is so long and complex that I think it turns people
off who might otherwise have something useful to contribute.
But the topic of this post was supposed to be how to get volunteers.
As some of you may know, I put forth the idea of incorporating
(perhaps under the umbrella of an organization already incorporated
that is set up for this). Then we could list volunteer openings under
"computers" on "Volunteer Match" and perhaps get people to volunteer
who have lots of free time, since people looking on the Internet for
volunteer positions likely have time for volunteering. However, such
people might not know Linux very well, if at all, and would need to
spend more time learning.
For some volunteer positions I found on the Internet, one needs to
fill out an application. I think for LDP, that they need to submit
something like an application. For example, if they've written stuff
on the Internet, send us some links to it. If not, I think they
should write a description of their background and what they think of
the free software movement and Linux, etc. As a minimum, volunteers
need to be able to express themselves clearly, with due allowance made
for cases where English is not their native language.
But I'm pretty busy right now with other volunteer work (mostly on my
energy, transportation, and religion website www.lafn.org/~dave) and
also I'm pretty old and my health is not the best. Also, I'm pretty
far behind in fixing up our house and my wife is seriously ill. So
someday I'll be leaving LDP, perhaps in a few years. So I haven't got
time right now to look for a sponsor that would let us incorporate
under their umbrella. But I might have time in a month or two. What
do you think?
David Lawyer
