i, quaid

This is the first Fedora release since … Fedora Core 3? … where I wasn’t buried up to my neck getting the documentation ready for release.

Paul and I have carried the Fedora Docs banner for a long time, but it became very obvious that we were standing in the way of progress by enabling other people to figure, “Oh, Stickster and quaid have got that.”  So in the middle of 2008, we did all the right things we could think of to turn the reigns of the Docs Team over to other interested and capable community members.

We set ourselves a FAIL/NOFAIL goal this release.  It is extremely clear that not only did we avoid failure, but things got better for Fedora Docs after we got out of the way.

• More content available at release (refer to docs.fedoraproject.org/ – in addition to the Release Notes and the Installation Guide, there is the revised SELinux Guide, the new Security Guide, and the updated User Guide.)  We more than doubled the number of guides, and when you do a page count, you’ll see it’s even more content than a doubling.
• Heavy, heavy collaboration amongst a larger group of writers, editors, and leaders.
• Full leadership from a mix of community members.  While some of the writers are paid by Red Hat to work on content externally (halleluja!), the Docs Team leaders are all contributors from outside of the technical writing field who are just passionate about making the best documentation we can.
• Deep progress on website improvements (CMS FTW!) and process improvements, more of which will become evident after the release.

All in all, I’m so beyond proud and bursting that I might just cry.  Really.

Everyone, thank you.