Does Ubuntu Care About It's Documentation?

[Robert Stoffers]

Matthew East wrote:
> Robert Stoffers <rstoffers <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Ok, so I thought I'd start blogging about Ubuntu.. to kick it off:
>>
>> Does Ubuntu Care About It’s Documentation?
> 
> The answer to this is quite obviously yes, for a number of reasons.
> 

Yes, there is a developer assigned to the docteam, and there is much 
work that goes on behind the scenes. Take a step back for a minute and 
look at the situation from the users stand point. Very rarely do the 
users that Ubuntu targets (newer users) read on board documentation, 
they have learnt from their Windows using days that the on-board 
documentation is quite useless (despite Ubuntu having good docs). The 
same users then type ubuntu.com into their web browser and still don't 
have any kind of direct link to the documentation, buried on the support 
page is not helping anyone. Don't believe me? I refer to an email I sent 
about a very recent (last week) article written by a technical author 
about Ubuntu in my blog post, even he was surprised to learn that 
official documentation even existed. Most other Linux distributions 
display prominently on their front page direct links to the 
documentation, except for Ubuntu.

> 
> The one single thing you complain about in your blog post is that there is no
> link on the front page of the website. 

Thats right, it is that simple. Simple to fix too.


While true, that is barely a complaint at
> all: none of the support resources (mailing lists, irc, forums, documentation,
> commercial support) are given links on the front page, but they all are found
> under a single link: http://www.ubuntu.com/support

The mailing lists, IRC and forums are types of direct technical support; 
that is you ask a question that someone reads and answers. These 
resources all exist elsewhere, where as the documentation needs to be 
featured both in the distribution itself and on the web site. The other 
thing about the documentation is to the user it is static. No way to ask 
questions, just a series of answers and the user has to find the right 
one for themselves, with little guidance. If they cannot find the 
documentation easily then they simply won't use it, instead taking the 
easy option of just asking someone else. Because of this the 
documentation needs a direct link on the web site and the other 
resources do not.

> 
> It would have been better to give your blog post a less provocative title,
> because during the last release cycle you were a prominent member of the
> Documentation Team and many may think that your views represent those of the
> current team. Certainly from my point of view, they don't.

I never pretended that my article was the view of the documentation 
team, in fact apart from listing elsewhere on the web site that I'm part 
of the doc team I don't make any representation in that regard.

Robert Stoffers