Mike Jang

Still frame of Mike Jang (Principal Technical Writer, NGINX) and Dave McAllister (OSS Technologist, NGINX) from episode 8 of the NGINX Community Chats.

In the newest episode of NGINX Community Chats, @dwmcallister.bsky.social and @mikejang.bsky.social dive into the bits & bytes of open sourcing NGINX documentation.

▶️: youtu.be/zZO2dzjDoTQ

Graphic with black background, blue cloud, and green NGINX logo with a green arrow pointing upwards/to the right. White text reads "NGINX Documentation Goes Open Source"

Exciting news 🌟 NGINX documentation is now fully open source!

We're looking forward to your contributions, opinions, and collaboration. Learn more in the announcement blog: bit.ly/40N8Bf3

While this was written about Oregon Ducks football,

It's a biting commentary about our culture today.

Achievement unlocked! Yesterday, I led a Conga line for the first time 🤣. (At a community disco dance.)

"Why is documentation important, and how we can make it better"

I talked about this in a YT podcast with twitter.com/rspaik: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok8P...

I've highlighted key points in a LI post: www.linkedin.com/posts/activi...

Mike Jang on LinkedIn: If you want to contribute to an open source software (OSS) project -- or… If you want to contribute to an open source software (OSS) project -- or to run a hackathon, great! But before you start, ask yourself "Why?" Do you want to…

As a Tech Writer, you can take 3 approaches to hackathons:

- Fix typos
- Clarify content
- Test procedures

I describe my experiences with such in https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7121903035668185088-KJ_L

Trivia. Vancouver Washington was once the prune capital of the world...

It's why I still mask up in airplanes (and airports)

Annular eclipse coming! Peak in about 100 minutes. Might be cloudy 🤣 in Vancouver WA

Seagulls in formation. All facing south

Seen this morning, by the "D" river. Bald eagle!

Bummer.

For us. It isn't all free. We had an all you can eat pancake breakfast over Labor Day. 200+ showed up. $7/person.

And we all pitched in, moving tables, chairs, etc. Actually promoted a sense of community!

And I can now brag that I scrambled 5 gallons of eggs 🤣

Our HOA works well for us. ~$650/yr/person, with a clubhouse, gym, and options for daily activities. Also pays for maintenance of shared areas. Yes, there are limits -- for outer appearance, they're reasonable (so far).

I wonder what Fitzgerald would say about the current epidemic of exclamation points... (🤣 Yes, I'm laughing at my own joke)

Covid. Day 8. This is my first time. (I've gotten the vaccine 5x).

Seems like Covid rebound (days 5-10) is a thing. (link bypasses paywall: www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/w...

I wish the 2023 booster was available a couple of weeks ago...

But I feel like the previous shots from 2022 and before helped me avoid feeling really awful (think Alex Leavy on "The Morning Show")

Covid. I've gotten vaccinated 5 times. The last time was November 2022. After each shot, it was as most 36 hours of lethargy.

I tested positive on Sunday. I'm still feeling it today. Just chatted with my wife for 3 min (she had it just before), and I'm exhausted.

1/2

I like the ideapod series... Or I used to like it until I discovered this bit .... https://ideapod.com/people-usually-happy-traits/

The prompts suggests the article was written with the help of ChatGPT

The wildfires on Maui are breaking my heart. The videos https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/maui-wildfires-08-09-23/index.html are devastating.

We hope to return when Maui is ready for us.

At fossy.us. Sriram Ramkrishna of Intel is working on new code for various GPUs. He's hoping to "write once" for all the GPUs.

Sounds familiar to this Tech Writer!

Git commit with Mike Jang's tweaks to (one) of the Top 10 LLM app security issues

Today is an excellent day w/r/t my work with OWASP. (We're creating a Top 10 security risks for LLM apps)

Now in a session on the "invisible work" behind community management, with procedures / documentation in "public spaces"

Documentation is an important part of open source community management.

2/2

More fossy.us. Second session with hidden documentation content.

Earlier, I attended an "opinionated" session on appropriate styles. Great, but I'm of a different "opinion".

1/2

fossy.us: follow up session on the Drupal community
While they have a BDFL - they also have

- Regular elections
- (flexible) term limits

Live Core Commit during the conference -- to celebrate the participants

Lesson 2: They actually have mentors who work with contributors

"Encouraging new users to contribute without stonewalling their efforts"

At fossy.us. Thinking about the nature of OSS project leadership. At a BSD session:

"Why This Open Source Project Has Endured"

Lesson 1: "We have no benevolent dictators for life"
- They've had leadership elections every year since 2000

Conclusions:

Style / content not portable
(what of linters like Vale!)

Lessons learned:

- Speaker is getting deep into the bowels of grammar, specifically w/r/t "we" ... :(

- Anthropomorphism... I disagree with the speaker on this... "causing problems"?

- "Support" is an overused, unspecific term

Next: conclusions

Feedback

- Respond to the individual. Make them the center of the conversation
- Implement a PR to the contributor fork

Next: lessons learned

Style Guides

- Many excellent style guides already exist
- Base on project with similar goals

People read it.... after you say "no, can you make this work with our style guide, and CoC"

(Or use our Linter with our style guide)

Next: Feedback