Here is the Communications Group Section. As before, The Communications Group doc is intended to be in the constitution, the guidance and the roles doc are supplementary material provided in the hope they will be useful when we finally get down to work. :)
Any and all feedback appreciated!
Regards
RonM
!! Communications Group
! Overview
The communications group, supported by the Communications Manager, can be split into four areas
SME Documentation Team
Translations Team
Web Site Team
Org Support Team
Note that any individual volunteer may hold more than one role on more than one team. The Communications Manager (CM) will strive to support the efforts of all groups.
! SME Documentation Team
The SME Documentation Team is responsible for all the documentation for SME Server and add-ons. This documentation should be available online and as downloadable files. The types of documentation include:
Manuals, User Guides, Admin Guides
Introduction to SME (Welcome, Download, Template system, etc.)
SME Security Guide
Feature Guides (mail subsystem, antivirus, etc.)
Developer Guides (roll RPMs, contrib testing, any requested help with
contrib documentation)
How-to's (writing How-to's, and/or accepting submissions)
Changelogs and Package Lists
It is not necessary to be a team member to write documentation - all documentation will be freely accepted. Documentation should be submitted to the CM so that it can be properly catagorized and included in the website.
Any tools used for the purposes of SME Documentation are the responsibility of this team.
! SME Translations Team
The SME Translations Team is responsible for making documentation available in all the languages for which there are sufficient interest and resources. The translations should be available online and as downloadable files. The primary sources for translations will be:
The developers group (server-manager panels, installation text, etc.)
The SME documentation team
Contributed How-to's
The primary goal of this team is to make SME Server usable to the international computing community. As time and resources permit, attention will also be paid toward making documents created in other languages available in English.
Any tools used for the purposes of translation are the responsibility of this team.
! Web Site Team
The Web Site team is responsible for all the features and activities on the community website(s). This team is led by the Web Administrator, who shall have the ability to create roles in the team to carry out the duties of the post (monitor mailing lists, create subwebs, assist with
GForge projects, etc.).
The community Web Site Team will follow the principle of least access: the members performing each role will have the access to any sections, subwebs, or virtual domains necessary to fulfill their duties, and no more. The Web Administrator will prepare a report listing all members
with extraordinary access twice a year at a minimum. This report will be available to the public.
To guard against accident, at least three people will have full administrative access to the entire web site. This number will include any server administrators at the hosting provider that have the ability to grant full administrative access to the web site. Only one of these
people, the Web Administrator, or delegate(s), will actively administer the site at any one time.
! Org Support Team
The Org Support Team is responsible for any documents concerning the community. This is not intended to include SME documentation.The types of documents include:
Policies, procedures, and process documentation
Official community documents, such as the constitution, guidances, etc.
Community introduction, Guides
Volunteering, How Do I get involved?
Documents that explain legal or official business documents in understandable terms
The Org Support Team will maintain a repository of any legal documents, contracts, etc., make
this repository available to the community, and keep it up to date.
The Org Support Team is not empowered to create or sign contracts, financial encumbrances, or other legally-binding documents. This is the responsibility of the Leadership Committee. The Org Support Team is to make up-to-date web copies of these documents available to the committee.
All policies, procedures, guidance documents, etc., shall be available to the public.
!! Communications Manager (CM)
This person will lead the volunteers in the communications group. The duties of this office include:
Making the final decision of what documentation will be in issued for
each release. The outgrowth of this work will be a documentation
policy, such that everyone knows what documentation to expect and plan for on
future releases.
Working with the group to see that volunteers are assigned to the tasks
needed for each release
Polling the volunteers to establish potential successors (preferably
two or more candidates) for the next election.
Communicate to the Administrative Group who is on the team initially
and update the Administrative Group as changes occur.
Evaluating submissions for News items for the community.
Making the final decisions on news releases about SME server that we
distribute to the public at-large.
Plan and execute a polling procedure with the SME community to make
suggestions about what features and changes they would like to see in
upcoming releases, contributions and/or how-to's.
The CM shall designate TM's to oversee the translation of SME
documentation into the language of interest to the designated DL (please refer
to the roles document).
Ensure that a changelog and release notes are available to be included with any new release.
.
!! Web Administrator
This position will assume responsibility for the content and style of the community website, within the broad directives of the Leadership Committee, and the administration of the web applications used in the website, in association with the Hosting Provider, or representative. This position is to be filled by a suitable volunteer chosen by the Leadership Committee and the Corporate Steward. The duties of this position include:
Planning and executing any changes to the community website.
Coordinating with the Corporate Steward/Hosting Provider to make
arrangements for issues regarding server moves / upgrades, mirroring, backups
and other administrative duties.
The Web Administrator is to be the single point of contact between the
Hosting Provider and the community with regard to technical issues of
server administration, and shall keep the Leadership Committee advised
about such issues (backups, server utilization, server/site
responsiveness, database optimization, etc.)
Maintaining the subscriber lists and assigning permission / privilege
to volunteers who request the same on an as-needed basis.
Developing and posting a current 'contact us' section for the site.
This section will be reviewed and updated on a monthly basis.
Monitor (or delegate the monitoring of) the generic contact email
addresses associated with the community website. The security contact email
address will be monitored by the SSL directly.
Delegate the responsibility for various sections of the website to
other volunteers as duties and / or workloads dictate.
Arbitrate disputes and make the final decision on content and style
issues
Post news items approved by the Communications Manager.
Guidance Document
The SME Server is a Linux server distribution focused on simplicity,
stability, reliability, and security. It is built using only components
that have an extensive track record in these areas. The server is
designed to be maintained by people with little or no technical background.
Communications Guidance
The Communications Group will therefore pursue the following goals, as
time and resources permit:
* Provide the information and support needed to help inexperienced
users receive the benefits of using SME Server
* Make the existence of this help as widely known, as easy to find,
and as generally useful as possible, through marketing, web site
design, and translation services.
* Provide training materials and guidance to help less experienced
users gain expertise and become more involved in the community as their
time, interest, and abilities allow.
!! Provide the information and support needed to help inexperienced
users receive the benefits of using SME Server
This is the primary goal of the Communications Group. A concerted
effort will be made to focus, for this purpose, on the exact minimum
information needed by the inexperienced user. More extensive information may
be available, and should be easy to find, but the first-time SME
installer should not need to deal with them before the need for this
information becomes apparent. The main methods used to achieve this goal shall
be:
* The SME Server User's Guide
* A set of introductory web pages - About SME, How to download,
Burn to CD, Installing SME, etc.
* New User's FAQs
* A general discussion forum focused on beginning and inexperienced
users
!! Make the existence of this help as widely known, as easy to find,
and as generally useful as possible
Information is not very valuable if people do not know it exists, can't
find it when they need it, or can't understand it when they do find it.
Therefore, The Communications Group will work to:
* Market and publicize the existence of SME Server, the community
website, and the server documentation
* Organize the community website so that the introductory
information is found first, and the location of all the new user information is
apparent
* Provide this introductory information (or links to it) in every
language for which sufficient active resources exist to translate it. An
obvious method to change languages (flags in the menu bar, etc.) will
be present on the home page and all introductory pages, and all these
pages must be translated to a given language for a link to that language
to be placed. The focus of this is the minimum information necessary to
have an understanding of what SME is, how to get it installed, and how
to configure it to work in the most common scenarios.
!! Provide training materials and guidance to help less experienced
users gain expertise
Many, perhaps most, users will be happy to get SME installed and
working, use the gateway and ibays, perhaps install a CMS, and do the
occasional update. Of course, this is perfectly fine - it's what SME server is
for. However, as they gain experience, some will want to learn more
about what SME can do, or have questions about security or extensibility
that only a deeper knowledge can answer. Some will want to help out in
the community, or learn how to build and share contribs they have used.
The Communications Group will therefore work, as time and resources
allow, to provide the following:
* A forum for more experienced users where more difficult questions
can be asked and answered. If possible the forum will be integrated
with an email list engine such that either method may be used to
participate in the dialog.
* A set of FAQs for these users
* An organized and searchable repository of How-to's, for such
issues as hardware, useful linux commands, common customizations, etc.
* An organized set of articles to 'walk' the user through the
process of installing third-party software, rolling and testing rpms, GForge
usage, etc.
An applicable exposition of security issues as they affect SME Server
!!! Methods and Materials
SME Server and community documents must be available to all interested
parties in a form they can use. Therefore, The following methods will
be used to distribute these documents.
!! Core SME Server and community documents will be made available in
plain text format.
SME Server Release Notes
SME Serve changelogs
SME Server User's Guide
Ruffdog's Contract with the Community
This Constitution and ancillary documents
Any general guidance, policies, procedures, volunteering, etc.
documents as they are created
These documents will be made available in a location that can be
reached without extensive gui navigation, such as an ftp repository (using
the mirrors).
The SME Server Release Notes and the changelog, in plain text format,
must be included in the release ISO of any new version of SME Server.
!! For distribution into the predominately gui-based computing
environments worldwide, core documents will be available in .pdf format
SME Server User's Guide
The introductory web pages
Any SME Marketing specific documents
It is not necessary for these documents to be available before the
release of a new version of SME Server
!! For daily use, and point-of-presence of the SME community and its
activities, all documents will be available on a website(s) and readable
through a web browser. No compatibility with any particular browser is
required - it is expected that standards-compliant technology will be
used and that this will suffice for a majority of community members.
Within the guidelines stated above, A web site will be created and
maintained by appropriate subteams. At a minimum the website:
* will allow users to find and install contribs, and participate
in their testing
* will allow users to find and apply howtos and participate in
their testing
* will clearly separate contribs and howtos, wherever they are
stored
* Provide documentation for every contrib, even if it's only "rpm
-Uvh ..."
* Allow users to post content to the web site, whether through
wiki or articles
* Allow users to link to documentation hosted on external sites
* Provide descriptions of how to participate in testing,
documentation, dev, FAQs, website, etc.
* Provide sufficient forums in General-purpose, defined subject
matter, and global languages
It is expected that the website will be built using a CMS portal that
supports multiple domains and is maintainable by our Hosting Provider.
!!! Communications Group Roles
The following roles are suggested, which are above and beyond those
mentioned in the constitution.
!! Docuware Leader(s) (DL)
This/these position(s) shall exist at the discretion of the CM OR
Webmaster to offload the work of developing documentation OR maintaining
sections of the website.
The DL's shall oversee the development of the documentation for the
release assigned to them by the CPM to the extent agreed upon between
them. An example of this in action might be to have the DL work with an RL
to develop the docuware that is to accompany an upcoming release.
DL's could also be used to develop candidates for the next CPM
election.
The DL's should review all documentation for grammar, format and
spelling prior to posting / publication.
The DL's (or CM) should review all freely contributed documentation for
grammar, format and spelling after its posting for website style
consistency.
!! Documentation team
This group is comprised of people who wish to contribute written or
graphical documentation to the core development of the SME server. This
group can be extended to provided assistance to the developers of
contributions that either contribute their own documentation or ask for
documentation assistance.
This is purely a volunteer post.
People shall be assigned the task that they either volunteer for or are
capable of doing and are assigned to do.
No volunteer contributions will be turned away, but submission of
documentation should be subject to a minimal review by a DL or CM.
!! Reporters
This group is comprised of people who wish to monitor various documents
or sections of the website for the purpose of sharing any changes or
updates with others. Examples of this might be monitoring Gforge, and
writing News articles to announce new contribs; or monitoring a set of
forums or threads and writing howtos or FAQs with the information
provided.
!! Translations Manager
The Translations Manager will take responsibility for translating the
SME Server text and documentation. The ultimate goal of this role is to
help make SME Server usable by people all over the globe. This person
will:
Evaluate whether there is enough interest in and volunteers for
translating the materials for a particular language.
Initiate a query with the Development Manager to determine if any
technical issues exist with adapting the SME materials into a given
language. Arrange to help perform any tests or fixes necessary to address any
issues. The TM will work with the CM to champion suitable
modifications to development team guidelines to ensure that alternate language
selection is as easy as possible in an SME server deployment.
Choose a Language Leader for the language and identify potential
volunteers
Coordinate between the language leaders and the CM to obtain English
translations of interesting developments on foreign language SME related
web sites for use on the main community website.
Arrange for the necessary materials, tools, and space for the language
team to work.
Help the Language leader gain enough members to accomplish the task in
a reasonable time without placing an undue strain on the team members.
Monitor the team's activities and provide help, guidance, resolution
when required.
Identify, with the Communications Manager, a "core" set of documents to
be translated into any language. Potential candidates should include:
Server Manager and Console strings
Release Notes and changelog
SME Server User's Guide
A set of introductory web pages - About SME, How to download, Burn to
CD, Installing SME, etc.
New User's FAQs
Act as a central point of contact for the Language leaders, the website
and documentation teams in general, to take note of any changes and
distribute them to all the Language leaders. Keep the translation(s) in
sync.
!! Language Leader
The Language Leader is a role responsible for getting a particular
translation finished in the language of their choosing. The Language Leader
chooses the team members and is the initial point of contact for the
project. Once the team is established, the Language Leader will:
Choose what translation efforts occur in what order.
Assign specific tasks to volunteers as their skills and interests
dictate.
Arrange to have finished translations checked for accuracy, and for
whether they function correctly in SME Server.
Act as a liaison between the Translations Manager and any changes to
foreign language documents or webpages (in their chosen language) for the
purposes of sharing developments and news items with other translation
efforts and keeping them in sync..
!! Translations Team
This group is comprised of people who wish to provide translations to
assist the core development and documentation of the SME server. This
group can be extended to provided assistance to the developers of
contributions that either contribute their own documentation or ask for
translation assistance.
This is purely a volunteer post.
People shall be assigned the task that they either volunteer for or are
capable of doing and are assigned to do.
!! Org Support Manager
The Org Support Manager is responsible for forming a small group to
document the community and its processes.
!! Media Liaison
This role is in charge of promoting SME Server to potential users in
small business, education, non-profit organizations, and homes, using
personal contact, linux websites and magazines. The liaison can work with
volunteers if necessary to share the work. The liaison will work in
concert with the CM in the development of news releases about SME server
developments for the general public. The CM retains final approval of
news releases.
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