Bug: There is no Ubuntu "wiki" (storehouse of information) easily accessible to new users

[anon]

On Sun, 2011-06-05 at 18:44 -0400, Manjul Apratim wrote:
> 
> People on the forums have complained time and time again about the
> state of the Ubuntu wiki, and by the "wiki", I mean the
> community-contributed technical documentation - as `Thewhistlingwind'
> said, it is 'hard to navigate' and lies 'in a backwater of the
> community'. 

I've already said my piece on this (As I am the user with that UN), to
add to it though, a technical community (Arch) is widely considered to
have better community documentation then the "Linux for humans".

If you try and tell me that what is quite possibly the largest desktop
distro, with corporate backing, and a great community, can't beat arch's
documentation, you'd be lying to me.

The key to doing that however, lies with the users, and if the Ubuntu
doc team doesn't want to facilitate their help, they won't get it. As
far as I'm concerned, there are two kinds of documentation for software,
the docs that come with the product itself, which for Ubuntu is written
by the doc team, and the docs you can get with a Google search. 

Currently the docs Google serve up are fragmented across pages like some
kind of ugly mosaic. Centralizing some of this information from forums
and help sites that allow it, would make Ubuntu a more viable platform
for user adoption. 

The Ubuntu forums recently considered deleting their archives, this
isn't something that can be stalled forever, eventually content will
need to be removed. Losing the buildup of how-to's and other docs would
be an unfortunate experience. But it's almost as bad to leave them as
outdated tutorials for users to frustrate themselves with when simpler
options exist.

A more comprehensive solution, and the whole point behind this push for
a powerful wiki. Was to have useful how-to's that never expire for as
long as someone is willing to maintain them, by presenting these docs as
a community documentation, or wiki. If that vision is appealing to you,
then your doing no one harm by saying that this bug affects you.

If you've ever written a piece of documentation for Ubuntu, anywhere,
this bug affects you, if you've ever helped someone on the forums, this
bug affects you, if you've ever needed help with an issue but couldn't
find the solution, this bug affects you, and if one of your goals is to
see Ubuntu grow to become an accessible "Linux for human beings", then
this bug most certainly affects you.