Re: [Freedos-devel] Volunteer

[Eric A. <e....@jp...>]

Hi Steve Owens, Wolfram,

> Let me add my third. I'm a writer, not a programmer, so I volunteered to
> help edit the online Help. I started doing that, then was informed by the
> fellow I was working with that the Help was written for people whose second
> language was English. As such, my edits were useless. So I just started
> verifying links in the Help, and was informed after a number of hours of
> work that the links had already been verified automatically.

At the moment, I would hope that somebody (Aitor?) could install
HTMLHELP 1.0.6 into a directory on freedos.org to make it a more
up to date replacement for http://help.fdos.org/ (it seems there
is no way to really update anything on fdos.org in 2008/2009?)

> All told, I wasted five or six hours of my time, probably an hour or two of
> the other guy's time, and the project gained nothing from this involvement.
> I know how hard it is to direct volunteer efforts, but perhaps a short email
> from the person you are assisting, spelling out goals, would benefit the
> project overall.

While it is bad that you lost some time due to misunderstandings,
I do not get the "HTMLHELP is for people whose second language is
English, so my edits were useless"? What is the problem with it?

Some more of (possibly off-list, chat, irc, skype...) discussion
before starting with the work might have helped, but on the other
hand, you can never avoid misunderstandings completely.

> On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Wolfram Sang <wo...@th...> wrote:
> 
>>> I have been told that I can help alot by assisting you.
>>> I have been given a link to the page but a list of files doesn't
>>> really tell me what to do.

>> I'd like to second Adam here. Once in a while (rare enough :/) I have a
>> free hour in the evening and thought I could devote it to FreeDos. But
>> then I end up at the above mentioned sites, having hardly a clue what
>> they propose me to do. A small HOWTO about how to interpret the
>> information on these sites may be a good idea as I could imagine there
>> are more people like Adam and me.

Hmmm assisting whom by doing what on which webpage? It seems I
lost track of the exact topic of assisting in this thread...?

Eric