[SGVLUG] Linux Documentation Project (= LDP) needs help

[David Lawyer]

I'm still involved with this project and have been looking over old
emails on it's main mailing list that I never found time to read, etc.
We are still getting new docs and updates but a major problem is that
most of the volunteer staff have quit so there are only a few left
that are somewhat active on the staff team (like me).

I looked at a 2000 post when the long discussion of how to integrate
all Linux documentation including the man pages and HOWTOs was just
getting started.  About half of the projects which existed then
dealing with Linux documentation are now dead.  For example the
Linux Knowledge Base Org.  The name (slightly changed) has been taken
over by a commercial website and their url: oods.org for their project
to create website management software (like Plone ??) leads to a bunch
of ads.  LDP had such a project too and decided to modify Plone for
our site, but the person working on it probably died so it remains
incomplete.

Well, although there were hundreds of posts with all kinds of good and
bad ideas on the integration of Linux documentation in 2000, nothing
ever came of all this work.  No consensus was reached and the key
people in the discussion eventually didn't have time for it anymore.
The founder of Linux Chix was involved and even created a mailing list
for us to discuss this.  But it produced no results and the "Open
Source Writers Group" that she started up also died. 

It's one of the goals of LDP to achieve this integration.  But after
that above failure LDP returned to it's local problems of out-of-date
HOWTOs etc.  The situation improved somewhat with new volunteers at
LDP but then a few years later started getting worse as staff
volunteers quit.  Right now I estimate that over 75% of our 400+
Howtos are out-of-date.  And we haven't decided on what to do with the
ones we think are out-of-date where we get no response by emailing the
author.

So we obviously could use more volunteers to help in various ways.
One task that we've neglected is recruiting new volunteers and that's
not good.  So if you are willing to spend an hour a week (or more)
helping, let me know.  Even someone new to Linux can help.  And there
are obviously all sorts of ways to help such as doing coding to modify
Plone, revising abandoned howtos, improving our website, contacting
authors who said they were working on a document but never submitted
it, recruiting new volunteers, etc., etc.  But we need good volunteers
of course and we've gotten a few in the past that tried to misuse the
LDP for their own purposes, etc. such as putting their company ads
(disguised as announcements) on our website.

			David Lawyer