User:Ris

Just hoping to help out if I can, in my spare time.

I've been using Gentoo almost every day since about 2006 for software development, office work, multimedia, web, graphics work etc. I've tried other distributions over the years, sometimes on the insistence of friends, and I have never found anything to match the stability, flexibility and just plain "seeming to do things the right way" as Gentoo.

I would like to wholeheartedly thank the wiki admins for all their work and for keeping this place together, the devs, and everyone who has built Gentoo and it's great documentation over the years!!

Works in progress
These pages are being developed with the aim to move them to the main namespace once they achieve "critical mass" - any contributions here much appreciated!

Plans
I'm hoping to concentrate work on improving the core Gentoo documentation at first, as opposed to documentation for software packages etc. starting with Portage related things in particular. There are some articles I would like to create, some to be fleshed out, probably some merged. I'm planning a "navbox" type piece to go on the Portage/ebuild/repo/etc. pages, as this is a very large section that I think could benefit from a more structured organization.

I want to continue with "Help:" pages, bringing them up to date and adding to them - seems like a good way to let more people get onboard, and perhaps make the experience better for them, and for others.

I then hope to work on categorizing articles more/better and fleshing out the category pages, like started for one or two already.

Once core documentation is fleshed out and organized, I want to work on explaining what Gentoo is, how it works, and what it is for, on a more abstract level - along the lines of what I have started in the FAQ, on What makes Gentoo different?. It seems to me Gentoo is often misunderstood, and even misrepresented. I would like to at least provide proper information to make it easy to get a true idea of what Gentoo is all about, so people can make up their minds about if it is for them, and hopefully avoid disappointing those who try out Gentoo having mismatched expectations.

I'll continue the category:Meta pages, as that is how I started out here, and I hope to see much useful/popular software put forward, at least with stub pages.

I hope to follow support in #gentoo on IRC some time, for any issues that would be suited to the "troubleshooting" sections - especially issues that come up again and again. In parallel, I'd like to write documentation to make it easier for anyone who wouldn't mind doing the same, especially those who provide support themselves.

Random ideas
"Documentation days" - like a bug day, for docs :o). Either close five discussions, document a package/concept you care about (even if just a stub), tackle a todo item, create a requested page, etc.

Documentation is important, and I think it has been one of the driving successes behind Gentoo (think about where we would be without the Handbook xD). Things could be much better though, and just a little effort on the documentation could make for a big impact on user experience - in fact I think it might today be a large section where the least work will go the furthest... which is why it seems so sad whenever it gets overlooked - we really should help make documentation writing cool :).