From the docteam meeting

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Jul 24, 2006, at 9:26 PM, Andreas Lloyd wrote:
> ...
> 2. Help Menu relabelling.
> As we discussed on the DocTeam meeting how the "System->Help" menu is
> not too helpful. Why is there both Online and System documentation? 
> What does the Book Excerpt provide apart from clutter?
> Having just one Help or Documentation menu item (along with the 2
> support items and maybe a Contribute! item - see point 4 below) would
> make it much more easier to get people to get to the help they need.

To abolish the "Online Documentation" menu item, I've reported a bug on 
linking from Yelp search results to help.ubuntu.com search results.
<http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344843> Once that's 
implemented, the separate menu item will no longer be necessary (and 
we'll start getting constant feedback, from search logs, of what is 
missing or unfindable in our help).

To abolish the "Ubuntu Book Excerpt" menu item, I plan to:
1.  incorporate, into the help, anything from the book chapters that is
     useful to someone already running Ubuntu
2.  add a link to the book from a "Getting more help" page
3.  report a bug about the book files being obsolete.

> I would also propose that the Community Support item should bring up a
> Pop-up asking whether the user wants Community support through
> Mailing-list, Web Forums or Live IRC Chat - with three buttons opening
> the Ubuntu-Users registration page, the Web Forums frontpage or GAIM 
> on the #ubuntu channel, respectively.

It already does this, except that it's a Web page rather than a 
"pop-up", and "#ubuntu" isn't a link when it should be. Since you need 
Internet access for any of those items anyway, I don't see much problem 
with it being a Web page.

> ...
> 3. Make people aware of the Help menu!

Yes!

> A lot users aren't aware of the Help menu and its useful contents.
> Traditionally, system documentation has always sucked, and to convince
> users that this documentation is useful, we'll need to trick them. My
> suggestion is that when the user is installing the system, she should 
> be offered the option to "learn about using Ubuntu" in the meanwhile. 
> The only time that the user is really keen on learning more about how 
> to use Ubuntu, is before they actually can play around with it.

Presenting it during installation would seem to make the installation 
more complicated. Remember, we're competing with almost *zero* 
installation effort for 85% of copies of Windows, so Ubuntu 
installation should be really really really really simple.

People would also be reluctant to try *anything* else during 
installation, both because they're conditioned to Windows where running 
stuff during installations is a bad idea, and because they have only a 
few minutes in which to try it (even if that few minutes would have 
been enough).

To increase people's awareness of the help, I propose that we make it 
awesome, and give it a top-level menu. In that order.

> ...
> This should help avoiding situations like this
> [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2006-July/088168.html]
> where one user is actually recommending the Desktop guide - but as a 
> PDF download rather than the easily accessible Help menu item!

It's not easily accessible, it's buried in the System menu. I mean, 
really, the *System* menu! Hopeless.

> ...
> Perhaps we can split each Doc wiki page into two sections:
> - the current, official documentation text which only Doc Team members
> can change,
> - a Comments/Suggestions/Experiences section at the bottom where users
> can add changes or suggestions much like in Rosetta. The important 
> part would be that every help section in Yelp would also contain a 
> link or a button saying: "Does this work for you? Share your 
> experiences, tips and tricks and improve the Ubuntu documentation" 
> which would send people directly to the corresponding Comments section 
> on the doc wiki.
>
> Focus should be on making it easy for users to contribute, even it 
> might increase the risk of frustration spam.
> ...

Yesterday I came across an article about how Microsoft developed a 
similar feedback system for their Office Online help, which may be a 
useful comparison. 
<http://infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200412/second.htm>

> Sorry that this got to be somewhat long-winded. I guess a lot of this 
> is what Matthew Thomas would call "Bikeshedding", but hopefully we can 
> get some discussion going on what kind of docs we want. If we reach 
> further consensus on this, I'd be happy to write out specifications on 
> Launchpad.
> ...

For changing the items and position of the Help menu, a spec probably 
would be counter-productive. I suggest we instead work towards making 
the changes obviously the right thing to do.

For a help feedback system, the appropriate place for a spec is 
live.gnome.org, not Launchpad.

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/