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

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)
Old stuff often keeps on working.  Sometimes coding needs minor and obvious 
changes.  Deleting obscure wisdom that has been built up over the years seems 
very short-sighted.  

Regards from
Tom :)




----- Original Message ----
> From: Jorge O. Castro <jorge at ubuntu.com>
> To: Manjul Apratim <manjul.apratim at gmail.com>
> Cc: ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> Sent: Mon, 6 June, 2011 1:50:10
> Subject: Re: Bug: There is no Ubuntu "wiki" (storehouse of information) easily 
>accessible to new users
> 
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Manjul Apratim <manjul.apratim at gmail.com>  
>wrote:
> > I realize that by spurring this discussion I am opening a can of  worms that
> > has long existed and been reiterated upon  continuously
> 
> Thanks for bringing this up. I have a talk at UDS about how  horribly
> out of date our documentation is, and have been asking people to  go
> back and clean up after themselves.
> 
> http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/5651069099/cleaning-up-after-ourselves
> 
> I  have some comments about your ideas:
> 
> > problem that there is a wealth  of information in the forum archives that is
> > just sitting there  inaccessible to most new users without extensive
> > searching, and which  urgently needs to become part of the wiki. The very
> > fact that the  documentation is not centralized nor easily accessible makes
> > potential  contributors refrain from contributing to it.
> 
> The wiki has lasted as long  as the forums have existed and there have
> been multiple attempts to get  information out of the forums and into
> the wiki. Ideally the "Tutorials and  Tips" section shouldn't even
> exist, as it encourages people to duplicate  information, and since
> it's a forum, no one except the original poster can  fix it, which
> means if someone is wrong someone else can't fix  it.
> 
> > Instead, the path that leads to the actual
> > "wiki" - the  community edited documentation, is obscure and of course, a
> > simple  Google search for "Ubuntu wiki" on the web leads to no useful
> > technical  documentation directly. In fact, a user may be thrown off by the
> > fact  that the pages ask him to refer to the "official documentation" as 
well
> >  as the "community contributed documentation".
> 
> I'm not convinced this is a  problem. Most people will just search for
> the problem in Google and go where  they end up. Unfortunately for us
> Google penalizes slow web sites, which  means that many times the
> results from the official wiki won't be on the  front page of a search.
> Fortunately the IS team has been working on this  problem and we should
> see performance improvements in the following  weeks.
> 
> 
> > Take the example of Arch Linux. It has probably the most  excellent Wiki one
> > could ask for; there's Arch, and there's the  ArchWiki. New users installing
> > Arch are referred to the Wiki - and most  of the qualms a new user may have
> > may be solved directly by reading the  wiki - there's no five different
> > places a user has to refer to to find  what information is relevant and what
> > is out of date.
> 
> Our wiki is  7 years old and has 7 years of information to clean up, of
> course a newer  wiki will be cleaner. I don't understand how we can fix
> the "send people to  the wiki" problem other than fixing the wiki and
> telling people to go to  it.
> 
> > In contrast, there are some veterans on the Ubuntu  forums
> > which have posted several great HOWTO's there, but these really  belong in a
> > central place on the Wiki, along with other good  documentation that pops up
> > from time to time.
> 
> Really someone  should propose to move all the HOWTOs to the wiki and
> shut down the section  in the forums.
> 
> > 2> The "Community Contributed Documentation" may  be renamed as the "Ubuntu
> > Wiki", and linked to directly from the  homepage - preferably somewhere near
> > the top right corner.
> 
> I  don't think end users will care about the word "wiki". Making the
> information  more relevant so the site performs better and shows up
> better on search  engines seems like the way to fix this for real.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jorge  Castro
> Canonical Ltd.
> http://twitter.com/castrojo
> Help fix Unity Bitesize Bugs: http://goo.gl/i1WA1
> 
> -- 
> ubuntu-doc mailing list
> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
>