New DevMo Roadmap and Progress

First, let me introduce myself.  I'm Deb, and I've been hired by the 
Mozilla Foundation to act as the lead driver for the DevMo project.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been formulating project ideas and 
plans, and discussing them at length with the other DevMo drivers.

The working-document resulting from this is posted on wiki.mozilla.org, 
here:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/DevMo_Project_Plan_Notes

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The "Short Term Goals" section of that document is as follows:

1) Set up a wiki using the MediaWiki software.

2) Set up a basic structure within that wiki towards organizing the 
content in meaningful ways. This would be largely, but not entirely, 
based off the Documentation Taxonomy.

3) Sort through the existing documentation and other relevant content we 
have and figure out what state it's in. This has been started at Links 
to Existing Content.

4) Start moving still-valuable content into the wiki within the basic 
structure.

5) Start promoting the wiki within the existing developer community. 
Hopefully they will take the time to update, edit, and add new content 
where they see errors, problems, or holes.

6) Finish branding and layout modifications for the wiki. Create and 
brand an initial portal/news-weblog system, then launch to a wider 
audience. At that point, if we've done things properly, it will start to 
take on a life of its own (with some serious care and feeding in the 
background).

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Some progress on this list has already been made:

1) A test/development wiki has been set up here:

http://developer-test.mozilla.org/docs/index.php/Main_Page

It's only been there for two days now, so is still very, very much 
"under construction" -- the front page is not finished, there's very 
little content and structure in the system so far, and the wiki 
configuration has to be tweaked a bit still.

2) The structure that /will/ be put in place is reflected on the front 
page, with individual wiki areas for each major topic.  The list of 
current proposed topics (organized by primary audience) can be seen here:

http://developer-test.mozilla.org/docs/index.php/All_Topics

This list of topics is derived from the nacent Document Taxonomy, that I 
have been working on over here:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/Documentation_Taxonomy

3) I've been digging through mozilla.org to find and identify possible 
content to migrate into the wiki.  The current, and hugely incomplete, 
lists are here:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/Links_to_Existing_Content
http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/Organized_Links_to_Existing_Content

If you know of any content that should be on those lists, please feel 
free to add it.

4) I've started a "proof-of-concept" piece for the wiki by doing up the 
Core JavaScript 1.5 Reference...current (and very incomplete) results 
can be seen here:

http://developer-test.mozilla.org/docs/index.php/JavaScript:References:Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference

5) + 6) -- we're not quite here yet, although the designers have worked 
up a MediaWiki skin for wiki.mo that is currently in testing.

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All that said, I would very much like to get your feedback on what I've 
presented here and on the wikis as the potential future for DevMo.  It's 
not a small project by any means, but I think it's important we get an 
infrastructure in place that makes it as easy and efficient as possible 
for people to add and update content within the project.

Unfortunately, while we have a lot of people who would /like/ to 
contribute content, most of them simply don't have the time or desire to 
spend a lot of time doing writing and markup using traditional 
documentation methods.

While not ideal in some ways, I think a wiki makes it significantly 
easier for more people who /have/ the knowledge to pass that knowledge 
on to others.  And really, DevMo is primarily about knowledge transfer, 
whether it be through documentation or community.

~ deb ("dria" on irc.mozilla.org)