https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Software/ProjectHome

[Matthew East]

Hi Duncan,

While browsing I recently came across the above page. While I'm
pleased to see that there is enthusiasm around for improving the help
wiki, I'm slightly concerned about a few aspects of it.

The first is that it seems to be setting up as an independent project,
rather than simply being part of the general Documentation Team's
drive to improve the help wiki. It has a separate irc channel, and
seems to be intended to have membership. That's not a good idea -
separate projects existing with similar goals for the same website is
bound to cause confusion, inefficiency and lack of communication. Can
you please rewrite the page so that it is clear that it is not an
independent project and discuss your ideas on the documentation team
mailing list (cc'ed). It would probably also be a good idea to make
the page a specification on wiki.ubuntu.com or at least a subpage of
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiTeam rather than an independent
page on the help wiki, so that users looking for help aren't confused
by it.

Also, it overlaps in content rather heavily with
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpWikiQualityAssurance (especially the stuff
about page banners). I'm concerned to see that you've gone ahead and
transferred your own ideas about page headers and other ideas directly
to the wiki guide at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiGuide/PageHeaders rather than
discussing them with the documentation team first. Had you done so, I
would have certainly encouraged you to contribute to the discussion
around HelpWikiQualityAssurance and to help implement that
specification. The WikiGuide page is for implemented and approved
ideas, not ideas which are still in the process of being developed and
discussed. For that reason, I've removed the links on the WikiGuide
page until the ideas can be properly discussed and finalised.

I'm pleased to see you (and others) coming in with ideas for improving
the help wiki, it certainly needs those ideas and people willing to
contribute, but we need to make sure that contribution is channelled
in the right way and doesn't overlap with existing projects. I'll be
happy to work with you to make sure that is the case, and look forward
to hearing your thoughts.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF