[AstroPy] Summer NumPy Doc Marathon (Reply-to: scipy-dev at scipy.org)

[David Goldsmith]

Dear SciPy Community Members:

     Hi!  My name is David Goldsmith.  I've been hired for the summer by Joe Harrington to further progress on NumPy documentation and ultimately, pending funding, SciPy documentation.  Joe and I are reviving last summer’s enthusiasm in the community for this mission and enlisting as many of you as possible in the effort.  On that note, please peruse the NumPy Doc Wiki (http://docs.scipy.org/numpy/Front Page/) and, in particular, the master list of functions/objects (“items”) needing work
(http://docs.scipy.org/numpy/Milestones/).  Our goal is to have every item to the ready-for-first-review stage (or better) by August 18 (i.e., the start of SciPyCon09).  To accomplish this, we're forming teams to attack each doc category on the Milestones page.

     From the Milestones page:

"To speed things up, get more uniformity in the docs, and add a social element, we're attacking these categories as teams. A team lead takes responsibility for getting a category to "Needs review" within one month [we expect that some categories will require less time – please furnish your most ‘optimistically realistic’ deadline when ‘claiming’ a category], but no later than 18 August 2009. As leader, you commit to working with anyone who signs up in your category, and vice versa. The scipy-dev mailing list is a great place to recruit helpers.

"Major doc contributors will be listed in NumPy's contributors file, THANKS.txt. Anyone writing more than 1000 words will get a T-shirt (while supplies last, etc.). Teams that reach their goals in time will get special mention in THANKS.txt.

"Of course, you don't have to join a team. If you'd like to work on your own, please choose docstrings from an unclaimed category, and put your name after docstrings you are editing in the list below. If someone later claims that category, please coordinate with them or finish up your current docstrings and move to another category."

     Please note that, to edit anything on the Wiki (including the doc itself), you’ll need “edit rights” – how you get these is Item 5 under “Before you start” on the “Front Page,” but for your convenience, I’ll quote that here:

"Register a username on [docs.scipy.org]. Send an e-mail with your username to the scipy-dev mailing list (requires subscribing to the mailing list first, [which can be done at
http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev]), so that we can give you edit rights. If you are not subscribed to the mailing-list, you can also send an email to gael dot varoquaux at normalesup dot org, but this will take longer [and you’ll want to subscribe to scipy-dev anyway, because that’s the place to post questions and comments about this whole doc development project]."

     Also, I’ll be holding a weekly Skype (www.skype.com) telecon – Wednesdays at 4:30pm US Eastern Daylight Time - to review progress and discuss any roadblocks we may have encountered (or anticipate encountering).  If you’d like to participate and haven’t already downloaded and installed Skype and registered a Skype ID, you should do those things; then, you'll be able to join in simply by "Skyping" me (Skype ID: d.l.goldsmith) and I'll add you to the call.

     So, thanks for your time reading this, and please make time this summer to help us meet (or beat) the goal.

Sincerely,

David Goldsmith, Technical Editor
Olympia, WA