From the docteam meeting

[Andreas Lloyd]

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> 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).

Yes! Brilliant! Have you had any response from the Yelp developers? As
far I can tell, they are Don Scorgie and Brent Smith. Don, I think, has
been known to read this list from time to time.

>
> 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.

Sounds good. I don't have a copy of the book, but I'd definitely like to
help with that.

>> 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.
>
I think the webpage is organized for a different purpose. When I open
the page I can only see "Free Support", "help.ubuntu.com" and "IRC
(Chat)" without scrolling. I'd like to have the 4 most used options even
more obvious. Having the further links as hyperlinks, requiring further
navigation makes it slightly more difficult to find the right option.
Maybe it's a question of reorganizing that page so that it contains big
buttons for each of the relevant options so as to make it easier for the
user to recognize.

>> 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).
It certainly wasn't the intention to make the installation more
complicated. All I envisioned was that while that Installation progress
bar was chugging along, the user could be offered the chance to read
more about Ubuntu (something like "Would you like to read more about
Ubuntu while you wait?") No further actions, thinking or trying would be
required. It would be meant as a comfort - along the lines of "Yes, we
know installing something new is pretty scary. We'd like to make it less
scary."
But the Windows conditioning is a fair point, I guess.

>
> 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.

That will certainly help as well :-)

>> ...
>> 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.
> 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>

That is very good, and I believe that we can do it one better, because
it is process that is just begging to be open in a Wiki sort of way.
I'll look into putting a spec up on live.gnome.org about this.

> 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.

Yes. Good point. If we get the linking to on-line searches working in
Yelp, and we can integrate the book excerpts, then it would be natural
to cut them out of the menu.


Cheers,
Andreas

-- 
https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho