A little over 18 months ago, Ariane K. and I started our tenure as co-leaders of the Drupal Documentation Team. We spent a lot of time working on organization, design, processes, and tools to make it easier for Drupalists to contribute to and use Drupal documentation, and I’m very proud of the many improvements we were able to make (of course, with the help of lots of other contributors!) during that time.
Ariane decided to end her co-leader term at the end of 2011, and I was planning to stay on as team leader until the end of 2012. But I’ve decided to end my term a bit earlier than I had planned, and so I am announcing today that I’m stepping down as the official Documentation Team Leader. This will allow me to concentrate on the Drupal volunteer work where I feel I’m making the most positive impact (and which, not entirely coincidentally, I enjoy the most):
- Reviewing and committing documentation and coding standards patches to Drupal Core
- Maintaining the API module (the module that powers api.drupal.org) and a few other contributed modules
- Improving tools and infrastructure on Drupal.org for documentation and for programmers
Due in part to changes in the design, processes, and tools for documentation that Ariane and I helped to put in place, I think that people in the larger Drupal community are now feeling much more empowered to create and edit Drupal documentation than they were 18 months ago, and I’m not sure when the Documentation Team Leader position will be filled -- or even if we need to fill it. People in the Drupal project are currently exploring Drupal community governance, and among the questions they'll be thinking about are the leadership and structure of the Documentation Team -- so expect an announcement sometime soon.
But in the meantime, I’m sure the community as a whole will continue to write and improve Drupal documentation, and I hope that everyone who considers themselves part of the Drupal Documentation Team will continue to take pride in the great job you’re all doing every day.