[Discussion] Software vs. Applications

[Matthew East]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:12 AM, Little Girl <littlergirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can muddy the water even more by pasting the Webster definitions
> for Application, Software and Program here:

{snip}

I think that it's clear enough that the bottom line is that most
ordinary users will mix these concepts. I don't think we need to
strive to separate concepts which most of the people reading the wiki
will basically understand to be the same.

The specific question raised in the original post is an easy one, I think.

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 12:51 AM, Marc Kaplan
<ubuntu-doc at technomensch.net> wrote:
> The prime example is "https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Applications"
> vs. "https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CategorySoftware"
>
> Which do you think is better, and why?

I think the first page quoted could possibly be useful. As for the
second, I don't think that is useful at all: the point of categories
is to provide a place where a user can view links to all the pages on
a particular subject. In this case, that's not applicable, because
almost every single page on the wiki could easily be classed as
concerning "software". It's a bit like CategoryDocumentation.

As a result, I suggest we just nuke this category. Again I'd emphasise
the point that we should use categories sparingly, only when they
actually add value.

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