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GSoD Technical Writer Selection Process

Dennis Clark edited this page Mar 21, 2022 · 24 revisions

Thank you for your interest in creating technical documentation for scancode-toolkit and vulnerablecode.

OUR EXPECTATIONS

Technical Writing Experience

You should have been actively writing technical documentation, and have multiple publicly available samples of your work.

Familiarity with scancode-toolkit or vulnerablecode

You will need to learn how scancode-toolkit works, its functions and features in order to write effective and useful technical documentation. We currently have some basic documentation at scancode-toolkit.readthedocs.io.

You will need to learn how vulnerablecode works, its functions and features in order to write effective and useful technical documentation. We currently have some basic documentation at vulnerablecode.

You will also need to know or learn the key concepts of Software Composition Analysis in order to understand your audience. You will need to install and run scancode-toolkit or vulnerablecode or both locally on your own computer.

Familiarity with Sphinx, RTD, git/GitHub

You should have experience writing documentation in a Sphinx/reStructuredText environment where the documentation is managed side by side with the code in a GitHub project repository. We treat technical documentation like code, tested for successful builds and checked with linters for quality control.

Eagerness to learn about and document scancode-toolkit or vulnerablecode

We expect you to try out scancode-toolkit or vulnerablecode or both yourself and familiarize yourself with them, and to be eager to learn and document all aspects of them, particularly the How-To Guides and Tutorials.

Here are some suggestions for you to consider as documentation topics:

  • Did you encounter any difficulties installing scancode-toolkit locally? Assuming that you resolved them, can you improve the documentation to help others?
  • Did you encounter any difficulties installing vulnerablecode locally? Assuming that you resolved them, can you improve the documentation to help others?
  • Do you understand how to interpret and get full value from these applications? How would you document ways to get the most out of these tools?

We use Diataxis - as a design framework for our documentation.

Reach out to us if you have any specific questions on setting up and using these tools locally or in general. Link to Gitter Chat

STATEMENT OF INTEREST

Applicants are expected to submit a Statement of Interest [GSoD Official Template] as a publicly viewable document, preferably in Google Docs, to [email protected]. [CC to [email protected] and [email protected]]

It should have the following minimum sections:

IMPORTANT DATES

  • 10 May : Deadline to Submit Statement of Interest
  • 15 May : We announce our selection
  • 16 May 18 PM UTC : Google Season of Docs Technical Writing Hiring Deadline

LINKS

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