<listitem><para>Emma Jane was still not happy with the Author Guide and after some discussion submitted a <ulinkurl="http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/guide/docbook/LDP-Author-Guide/">new update</ulink>, merging the contribution section into The LDP publishing process section.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>David Hinds submitted the v2.118 of his <ulinkurl="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PCMCIA-HOWTO.html">Linux PCMCIA HOWTO</ulink>. This version features updated lists of supported hardware, updated program version numbers of the discussed software and a whole new section about the kernel PCMCIA support in 2.4 kernels and higher.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Christine Lorenz submitted v2.3.0 of the <ulinkurl="http://tldp.org/LDP/EVMSUG/html/index.html">EVMS User Guide</ulink>. She is co-author of this document with Joy Goodreau and Kylie Smith.</para></listitem>
application was for <ulinkurl="http://www.htdig.org">ht://dig</ulink> (a great little search engine).
The document was very well received by my client at the time,
and by the ht://dig community. Although my documentation had always been
appreciated at work, this was the first time I'd received recognition from
a community of users.</para>
<para>My first document accepted to the LDP was the <ulinkurl="http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/ACPI-HOWTO/index.html">ACPI HOWTO</ulink>. Originally, it was
just notes on the installation process, that I made for myself. These I
submitted to various mailing lists to confirm their accuracy. I got lots of
good feedback and
Sebastian Henschel asked me to publish them on-line for the <ulink
Werner Heuser suggested I submit the document to The LDP. Tabatha did my
language review and started sending me really polite emails suggesting that
maybe I'd like to be a technical reviewer. The next thing I knew I'd
volunteered to re-write the Author Guide (a total of about nine months work) and
suddenly I was a full fledged technical and meta data reviewer.</para>
<para>My original ACPI HOWTO now needs a major revamp for the 2.6 kernels, and
I've been gearing up to work on that. Ariel Glenn will be helping me
with the re-write (a process I'm actually looking forward to now).</para>
<para><emphasis>Q: I took the liberty of going through your CV. As far as your employment is concerned, you seem to do fairly well and in accordance to the subjects you studied while at the university. But then for TLDP I see you reviewing the USB Flash Memory HOWTO and the BLFS document, and authoring the ACPI HOWTO. How did you grow an interest for these?</emphasis></para>
<para>A: At this point I'm doing two types of reviews: metadata and technical.
For the technical reviews I need to know something about the topic that I'm
reviewing. I currently have a USB key chain and a USB camera, so it was a
Guide</ulink> and the <ulinkurl="http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LDP-Reviewer-HOWTO/">Reviewer HOWTO</ulink>. The first (ACPI HOWTO) was simply a document
that I wrote from my own notes on a specific problem that I had to solve.
The second two documents are more "process" documents for The LDP. There
are a lot of volunteers at The LDP, many of whom perform critical roles in
the publication of documents. I've been working on getting some of these
processes documented so that if a volunteer ever wanted help, or decided
to retire, there would be instructions on how to perform that volunteer's
tasks.</para>
<para><emphasis>Q: Did you ever have difficulties or encounter restrictions, being a woman at TLDP? And the eternal question: What should we do to get more female volunteers? What should men do to get more women to join this and other Linux projects?</emphasis></para>
<para>A: The only restriction I've found is that I get to do more work! The men on
the list are good at discussing the overall direction of The LDP while the
women seem to be better at processing new documents for their collection
into the LDP (and removing old/out of date documents). When it comes to
processing documents I work primarily with three women and Greg
Ferguson--that's not to say that there aren't any male volunteers! They just
aren't the ones that I do the most work with for the processing of documents.
</para>
<para>Then I look at the work I do on the overall picture and it's mostly men
(and two women). Saqib Ali and David Horton have helped me a great deal with
the tool and document transformations. Greg, as I mentioned above, is
responsible for publishing documents. Stein Gjoen and I have had many
interesting conversations about library-friendly document storage and
meta data. Most of the licensing discussions are headed up by the men on
our team.</para>
<para>As much as I would like to say that it's the men who need to do something
to get more women involved, I think it's really up to the women. Yes,
there are some male bozos out there, but there are some female ones too.
Generally my advice is this: when the bozos behave badly, let them know
what is wrong about their behaviour; then thank them for their help when
they are being good. If a group has an overwhelming number of bozos, find
a new group. There is not a single Linux group that I've quit because of
men behaving badly.</para>
<para>So how do we get more women involved? Good question. I don't have a lot of
tech-oriented female friends. And those who are tech-oriented are too busy
working to consider switching operating systems. It's a long, slow
process, but I think as sophistication of Linux desktop applications grows and
then surpasses the applications available on Windows/Macs we will see more
women involved with Linux. Certainly I came to Unix/Linux fairly late. I was a
Machead growing up, then switched to Windows for university. I tried Linux
in 2000, but the applications I needed weren't stable enough for me at the
time. I tried again in 2002 and have been here ever since.</para>
<para><emphasis>Q: What could TLDP be doing better, according to you?
</emphasis></para>
<para>A: I know how much work is involved because I am a reviewer, but... I would
like to see the entire collection reviewed. I would like to have the
volunteer power to review every document on its one year anniversary. At
that time the document would be either kept in the collection <quote>as
is</quote>,
removed from the collection, or kept with certain conditions (for example
my ACPI HOWTO needs to contain information about the 2.6 series kernels).
The review date would be based on the document's anniversary, not based on
