A Though on Redundancy of Community Wiki and Other Forms of Support

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)
Going slightly off-topic ...

Joomla itself has gone through some fairly radical upgrading since
then too.  I found their wiki difficult to work through and in the
process of trying to help them they deleted some of my pages without
even discussing it with me first.  Joomla tends to be something that
an average Ubuntu user would only use the front-end of.  The back-end
would be provided by a web-hosting company.  So it might help to have
back-pages / sub-pages showing how to get to the Joomla on various
different web-hosting providers.  Luckily that seems to be fairly
generic but it's not something that the Joomla people want to have on
their wiki.

So most joomla users only need to know how to use the front-end and
that is mostly inside a web-browser and looks the same on any
platform.  There are some neat tricks that Gnu&Linux users can make
greater use of.  Ftp'ing is more of a unix-based thing and some very
rare web-hosting companies even allow ssh'ing, which again favours
unix-based platforms.

I think our current Joomla page favours those who want to run a
web-hosting service from their own machine.  So it's really more of a
server-guide thing rather than normal user documentation but it would
be good to keep all the joomla stuff together.  Maybe make it clearer
that normal users should really go to the joomla website but it would
be nice to build-up the crucially missing stuff that a new user would
need but that is somehow not on the Joomla people's wiki.

Regards from
Tom :)





On 1 December 2013 17:56, cprofitt <cprofitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2013-12-01 at 10:44 -0500, Svetlana Belkin wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> Just a thought on the Community Wiki, one that I will say no offence to,
>> if this will hurt someone's feelings.  Why is there major redundancy
>> with the various formats of documentation/support that we have?  This
>> includes AskUbuntu and the forums.  Well, mainly with AskUbuntu.  It
>> seems that most users who need support will go to AskUbuntu without
>> first looking in the Community Wiki, at least what I see when I pop in
>> and out of AskUbuntu.
>
> I think this is a really good question and one that does need to be
> answered. Let me start with what I feel are the strengths of each
> platform.
>
>       * AskUbuntu - allows for multiple answers and up-voting allows for
>         good answers to be viewed 'higher' than other answers.
>       * Forums - allows for a dialog to take place between the person
>         seeking help and those giving help. Often a person asking for
>         help does not know what technical details to give so that others
>         may help them. Initial questions are vague and need
>         clarification. The forums are also better for asking 'opinion
>         questions' like - what is the best content management system
>         that can run on Ubuntu 14.04
>       * Wiki - This is an excellent medium to use for guides on how to
>         setup a particular software. This is especially true for
>         software that is not pre-packaged in the repositories.
>
>> I understand why we still have the Community Wiki (or I don't), but in
>> it's current state, it's not effective.  Or it's because AskUbuntu was
>> added later on for the ease of support.
>
> AskUbuntu was added later on. The Community Wiki, in my opinion, should
> be used to document things like the following:
>
>       * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Joomla
>       * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/SambaServerGuide
>
> The problem with the Joomla documentation is that it is badly out of
> date having been written for 6.06 and 7.04. Though it was tested again
> under 10.04.
>
> As a to-do, I will try to update that page based on my blog post.
>
> http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/joomla-on-ubuntu-server-13-10/
>
> In my opinion documents like this are not ideal:
>
>       * https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Moodle
>
> This is due to the fact is simple points to another external source and
> there is/was no need for a unique page. One page listing all the
> external instructions could have been compiled and used. I do realize
> that this might be a personal preference though.
>
>
>> It's either we need to figure out what what users want from the Ubuntu
>> Community Wiki via a survey or we, as a team, could work activity and
>> clean it up so it's easier to use.  Or another solution can be also
>> worked out, maybe something on the AskUbuntu site about the Community Wiki.
>
> AskUbuntu, in my opinion, is not the best place for a detailed guide to
> installing Joomla or configuring Samba. It is fantastic for asking
> questions such as why 'passwordless ssh can not accept the key' -
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/378342/passwordless-ssh-cannot-accept-the-key
>
> I am sure that since AskUbuntu came later that there is cross over. I
> also agree that there is likely confusion amongst end users as to what
> resources to use to get the information they need. In a perfect world...
>
> A guide on installing Joomla would be created on the
> help.ubuntu.com/community wiki and it would link to AskUbuntu using a
> search term as follows: http://askubuntu.com/search?q=joomla
>
>
> Thanks for raising the point. I think it is one we have to work through.
>
> Charles
>
>
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