Improving Ubuntu Help/Docs part 1 of 3 | sec=unclassified

[Stoffers, Robert LAC]

> Last week I returned to PC and Ubuntu-land as I installed it onto a
> second PC at my kids place. The PC is networked and needs to 
> send print
> to a Windows PC. I needed info on how to do this. So I spent a day
> reading the help, the wiki.ubuntu.com, and some of help.ubuntu.com to
> find out how. What I found was not very impressive. In fact a LOT of
> what I found I thought was VERY amateur. "What a poor 
> advertisement for
> Ubuntu. Microsoft need never have to worry about Linux if this is the
> best that the top distro can produce." I thought.

There are recognised problems with the way the web site as a whole is laid out, even I have expressed my views rather colourfully on this before. The BetterWikiDocs spec (which has recently been approved) will fix many of the useability issues you have found, I for one look forward to the day that this is implemented fully.

There is no need to slander the hard work many of us have put into writing documentation in the way you have, please leave the trolling at the door on your way in next time. 

> (Over 20 years ago, IBM stuffed up in a similar way. They produced an
> excellent OS, called OS/2. It was vastly better than Windows, and of
> course Microsoft, being involved, learnt a LOT about how to build
> multitasking kernels from it, and later went on to produce NT/2000/XP.
> Where did IBM lose? They did not provide networking (TCP/IP) 
> with OS2 in
> their package, whereas M$ bundled it into Windows (version 
> 3.5). So most
> people with OS/2 could not connect anywhere, unless they paid another
> $450 then for TCP!! Result : nearly everyone eventually went 
> to Windows
> in their office, mainly 1.) so they could share printers, then 2.) to
> email, and to share files. Sharing a printer was then and still is one
> of the most important things people want from a PC. These days it is
> even important in the home, as many homes have multiple PCs and people
> do not want the expense of maintaining (ink for) multiple printers.)
> 

How is any of this relevant to the documentation? File a bug report or take it up on -devel if you have any valid suggestions on how to improve the interface.

> ("Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat 
> it." Who said
> that - Winston Churchill?) And oh dear, you guys are 
> repeating mistakes
> I have seen dozens of times in the past. New technology, same 
> old human
> brain.
> 

Please, stop trolling.

> I worked out how to print over a network, and so I have written
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NetworkPrintingWithUbuntu and redirected
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NetworkPrintingFromUbuntu to it.

Now, if I called your work "VERY amateur" on a public mailing list you would be rather offended by this, yes? Thanks for contributing.

> 
> Anyway, having read and analysed so much info, and the pages and
> messages about contributing, I have decided to write a brief list of
> what you need to do, in the next message. Its intentionally going here
> and not on a page such as https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterWikiDocs for
> reasons that will be apparent in the next parts in following messages.
> This is moe than enough for you to digest for now.
> 

Please comment in the /talk section of the spec instead.

Robert Stoffers
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