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Proposal: Core Development - Technical Writer For Core Documentation (Downvote)

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
UPDATE: The core team is no longer seeking funding for this proposal. I have already communicated to the core team to vote against and it is no longer passing, so no need to take any action, but please don't vote for this proposal.

The original intent was to use the funds that were unallocated at the time to pre-fund this expense. Since it was submitted, a couple of community proposals have garnered additional support, so we risked trampling some quality community proposals with this non-urgent need. We will seek funding for this proposal, therefore, in a future period.

Now that things appear settled on the funding for the month, I plan to submit a smaller proposal to the network today to put the remaining funds to good use based on the new rankings.

This is a cross-post from www.dashwhale.org/p/crdev-docwiki-201608

Overview of the proposal:

As the project continues to mature, we are seeking to operate in an increasingly professional manner. One critical aspect of a technology-centric project like Dash is offering professionally written software documentation. This proposal seeks funding to hire part-time contracted technical writers to properly document our core software and ensure our documentation is up-to-date throughout the development of 12.2 DashDrive (which extends from August to March).

By contracting highly competent technical writers throughout the process, we can both offload these responsibilities from programmers (thus accelerating development) and ensure high quality documentation for new developer onboarding, reference material for business partners seeking to integrate Dash, and assurance to investors that demand a high-quality project.

This proposal is a one-time expense for the duration of 12.2 development. The estimated cost totals $4,400.00 for the entire period. This one-time request approach will allow us to hire technical writers as needed over the project period without submitting multiple related proposals.

EDIT: Removed references to "wiki" because it was causing confusion... some were inferring incorrectly that this was simply updating our existing wiki as opposed to creating programmer reference material. Apologies for the confusion.

Requested funding is as follows for the August 5th budget cycle:
Total: 482.59 Dash

Note: Any unused funds from this core development budget will be directed toward other core development expenses.

Manually vote YES on this proposal:

dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 5cd220c375e90fe8102973192e0f749903b9233e6bb77a5a5ea4031574d46ff5 yes
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 5cd220c375e90fe8102973192e0f749903b9233e6bb77a5a5ea4031574d46ff5 yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:

dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 5cd220c375e90fe8102973192e0f749903b9233e6bb77a5a5ea4031574d46ff5 no
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 5cd220c375e90fe8102973192e0f749903b9233e6bb77a5a5ea4031574d46ff5 no
 
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I think this is a great proposal. However I believe the proposal is more for a competent developer to do technical writing than for a technical writing as a technical writer works off notes and I'm not sure we have those. Which would explain the price tag.
 
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I think this is a great proposal. However I believe the proposal is more for a competent developer to do technical writing than for a technical writing as a technical writer works off notes and I'm not sure we have those. Which would explain the price tag :)

I am certified incompetent.
I am a pathological liar and functional illiterate.
But I like to help...
And I am gratis !

Best
rc
 
For those who claim that they will document the code gratis.
Why havent you already done it?
What are you waiting for?

For example, I am searching the part of code that deals with voting yes/no, in order to change it and vote with numbers. Where is it? Where and how can I find it? Is this documented?

I think you should give a try in gratis, just create a wiki and let subscribed members to document the code. If they fail, then you have to hire a proffesional for that.

Note also that someone who is able to document the code, he can also do testing, and discover hidden bugs. Testing is the real value that occurs when documenting the code.
 
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I think this is a great proposal. However I believe the proposal is more for a competent developer to do technical writing than for a technical writing as a technical writer works off notes and I'm not sure we have those. Which would explain the price tag.

I agree
I believe the wiki is pretty under control (always needs more work obviously)
this sounds more like documentation of proper code - - DS -- IX - .... and so others devs (except Evan and the pros ) understand what is going on and how it works
 
This is pricey. IMNewbie Opinion.
I will volunteer to assist in editing, if needed.
Gratis.

Best
rc
I have seen a number of posts like this one or questions about why we need a writer. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of understanding of what a technical writer is, so let me explain in greater detail.

A technical writer is a specialized profession within the computer science / programming field. The role combines the disciplines of writer and technologist. A strong technical writer needs to have the ability to read code written in any number of languages and effectively translate that into reference documentation for programmers (e.g., how the code works, what constraints exist in inputs, how outputs are formatted, etc.). They also create documentation for users, develop design specifications, and write/update whitepapers.

So this is not simply asking some volunteers for some editing time. We need a comprehensive and systematic review of the code and complete professional documentation in keeping with our project's size and growing importance.
 
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