Addison Berry
2009-04-15 00:34:10 UTC
add1sun has posted a Discussion at http://groups.drupal.org/node/21339
(To see the charts and find the attachements, go to the g.d.o post.)Doc survey results
---------------
A few weeks ago I put up a quick survey about Drupal docs. It was
very "by-the-seat-of-my-pants" but I just wanted to start getting a
feel for where people are coming from and give the community an
opportunity to talk about docs. It wasn't scientific and it wasn't
even a "good" survey. I am definitely not a survey expert. Luckily
some folks have volunteered to help me make future surveys better,
but I'm still happy with what I learned from this one. I wanted to
share some basic stuff that I found interesting from the responses.
I don't have a lot of time to tinker with stats and such and I've
also attached the results in a CSV file so anyone else that wants to
play with them, can have fun. My main interest in this survey was to
read what people would say about docs when given an anonymous text
box and how people think of Drupal docs. OK, so anyway, here are the
goods....
1. How long have you been using Drupal?
2. Are you a member of the Drupal documentation team?
3. Do you feel that you have the skills or meet the requirements to
help with Drupal documentation? If not, please explain what skills
or requirements you feel are needed.
4. In what ways have you contributed to Drupal documentation?
- Edited existing documentation on Drupal.org
- Wrote new handbook page(s) on Drupal.org
- Wrote or edited help text in Drupal core
- Provided a patch for API documentation (api.drupal.org)
- Created an issue in the Documentation issue queue
- Participated in a Drupal documentation meeting or sprint
- Participated in a documentation mailing list discussion
- Created documentation made available on a site other than the
Drupal.org sites
- I have not contributed to Drupal documentation
- Other (with room to explain)
5. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have about about the
Drupal documentation team and the maintenance of Drupal documentation.
Things that stuck out to me
Real quickly before I head into a few, brief points, I should note
that this survey wasn't widely broadcasted. I posted to the g.d.o
front page and spread the word on Twitter. Since it was not a well-
planned survey I didn't feel like I should do a front post on
Drupal.org. I plan for future surveys to be more thought out and get
wider exposure. Just over half the responses were from people with
over 2 years of Drupal experience, so the numbers may look a bit
lopsided. That said, I found it interesting that just because people
have been around for a while does not necessarily mean that they
have any better grasp on what the doc team is about or how they can
get involved.
It is no surprise that people who are newer to Drupal don't feel as
qualified to help with documentation. I think many of us know this
anyway, but this is a major assumption that I want to change this
year. New users are a critical piece to good documentation and we
need to encourage more people to engage sooner, before they get
"Drupalized."
Aside from folks not feeling that they know Drupal "well enough,"
other common blockers for folks were language or time. Again, not
terribly surprising but areas I'd like to chip away at as well.
There were definitely a lot of responses where people want to help
but can't see a clear, simple way to get started, or something that
doesn't end up consuming too much time. Coming up with more straight-
forward directions for helping with docs is a high priority for me
right now and I hope that the doc sprints I am attending, chatting
with all sorts of people about docs, will help clarify this.
Another interesting thing was that percentage-wise there was a
roughly consitent number of folks across all experience levels who
weren't sure if they were on the doc team or not. Since we opened
the handbook last year, we have been trying to redefine what the
"doc team" means and I dare say we aren't doing a horribly good job
right now. The general idea is that there is no special team you
need to join with fancy site permissions to be on the team. One
thing that has done though, I think, is maybe blurred it so much
that people aren't really sure where lines of authority or access are.
So, these are some quick thoughts but I invite everyone to look
through the results themselves and continue this conversation. I did
a few basic charts, which may or may not be useful (but they look
perrrty ;-)). There are two CSV files attached as well, results-doc-
survey.csv is the raw data from the survey site, and basic-stats.csv
were the little mini tables I used to make the pie charts. (Note
that I did redact some personal info to maintain anonymity.) You
should be able to open the CSV files in most any spreadsheet
software, like Excel, Numbers, or OOo Calc.
- Addi---------------
A few weeks ago I put up a quick survey about Drupal docs. It was
very "by-the-seat-of-my-pants" but I just wanted to start getting a
feel for where people are coming from and give the community an
opportunity to talk about docs. It wasn't scientific and it wasn't
even a "good" survey. I am definitely not a survey expert. Luckily
some folks have volunteered to help me make future surveys better,
but I'm still happy with what I learned from this one. I wanted to
share some basic stuff that I found interesting from the responses.
I don't have a lot of time to tinker with stats and such and I've
also attached the results in a CSV file so anyone else that wants to
play with them, can have fun. My main interest in this survey was to
read what people would say about docs when given an anonymous text
box and how people think of Drupal docs. OK, so anyway, here are the
goods....
1. How long have you been using Drupal?
2. Are you a member of the Drupal documentation team?
3. Do you feel that you have the skills or meet the requirements to
help with Drupal documentation? If not, please explain what skills
or requirements you feel are needed.
4. In what ways have you contributed to Drupal documentation?
- Edited existing documentation on Drupal.org
- Wrote new handbook page(s) on Drupal.org
- Wrote or edited help text in Drupal core
- Provided a patch for API documentation (api.drupal.org)
- Created an issue in the Documentation issue queue
- Participated in a Drupal documentation meeting or sprint
- Participated in a documentation mailing list discussion
- Created documentation made available on a site other than the
Drupal.org sites
- I have not contributed to Drupal documentation
- Other (with room to explain)
5. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have about about the
Drupal documentation team and the maintenance of Drupal documentation.
Things that stuck out to me
Real quickly before I head into a few, brief points, I should note
that this survey wasn't widely broadcasted. I posted to the g.d.o
front page and spread the word on Twitter. Since it was not a well-
planned survey I didn't feel like I should do a front post on
Drupal.org. I plan for future surveys to be more thought out and get
wider exposure. Just over half the responses were from people with
over 2 years of Drupal experience, so the numbers may look a bit
lopsided. That said, I found it interesting that just because people
have been around for a while does not necessarily mean that they
have any better grasp on what the doc team is about or how they can
get involved.
It is no surprise that people who are newer to Drupal don't feel as
qualified to help with documentation. I think many of us know this
anyway, but this is a major assumption that I want to change this
year. New users are a critical piece to good documentation and we
need to encourage more people to engage sooner, before they get
"Drupalized."
Aside from folks not feeling that they know Drupal "well enough,"
other common blockers for folks were language or time. Again, not
terribly surprising but areas I'd like to chip away at as well.
There were definitely a lot of responses where people want to help
but can't see a clear, simple way to get started, or something that
doesn't end up consuming too much time. Coming up with more straight-
forward directions for helping with docs is a high priority for me
right now and I hope that the doc sprints I am attending, chatting
with all sorts of people about docs, will help clarify this.
Another interesting thing was that percentage-wise there was a
roughly consitent number of folks across all experience levels who
weren't sure if they were on the doc team or not. Since we opened
the handbook last year, we have been trying to redefine what the
"doc team" means and I dare say we aren't doing a horribly good job
right now. The general idea is that there is no special team you
need to join with fancy site permissions to be on the team. One
thing that has done though, I think, is maybe blurred it so much
that people aren't really sure where lines of authority or access are.
So, these are some quick thoughts but I invite everyone to look
through the results themselves and continue this conversation. I did
a few basic charts, which may or may not be useful (but they look
perrrty ;-)). There are two CSV files attached as well, results-doc-
survey.csv is the raw data from the survey site, and basic-stats.csv
were the little mini tables I used to make the pie charts. (Note
that I did redact some personal info to maintain anonymity.) You
should be able to open the CSV files in most any spreadsheet
software, like Excel, Numbers, or OOo Calc.
--
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