Localisation of help.ubuntu.com

[UndiFineD]

Hello Andrej,

Great work, I can see why you like it.
What I am wary of though, is that documenters and translators already
have so much to do.

= Who what where when why how =
What is the additional maintenance ?


2011/5/5 Andrej Znidarsic <andrej.znidarsic at gmail.com>:
> Hello!
> Yesterday I wrote a short email why having a localised help.ubuntu.com is a
> good idea.
> I have been talking to David Planella on IRC and realised I didn't
> understand how localised help.ubuntu.com is supposed to work at the time.
> Now i realised it has many more advantages as I thought.
> So I decided (in absence of other replies) to write a bit longer argument
> why i believe localisable help.ubuntu.com is a great idea for loco teams. ;)
> Now i know the same strings are used both for help in ubuntu (software) and
> help on help.ubuntu.com. This means that translation teams don't have to do
> any extra work to have a localised help.ubuntu.com and greatly decreases
> amount of work required to have a translated online help.
> Many teams (including Slovenian Loco team) occasionaly experience a decrease
> in activity and hence aren't able to update documentation on wiki (this is
> now much more noticeable when unity is here). Even if teams have enough
> contributors I believe community documentation is of inherently lower
> quality. Firstly it's difficult not to miss something out, and docs team IMO
> does better work at this since it's more structured/organized than most of
> local documentation teams.
> In additon most users who edit local wikis are close to normal users and are
> not in contact with the developers as much as the docs team. This means
> editors of local wikis are not familiar with all the changes between relases
> and need to discover them theirselves (most often after stable release).
> This meanes some minor changes or features are only found at a later time or
> not at all (especially minor changes such as changed menus or options
> somewhere deep in a menu for example). Therefore local community based
> documentation will be always less complete and/or updated at a later time.
> This can be very important as most users tend to try ubuntu in the first few
> weeks after stable release and existing users usually read the documentation
> in the first few weeks after stable release too, to see what is new or to
> seek help with changed options/programs. So if the local docs teams
> functions ok, it will be slightly incomplete/out of date. I quickly checked
> a couple of local wikis. While I don't posess a linguistic knowledge to
> determine if the content is updated/good quality in my opinion about 10-20
> wikis in total has a significant amount of content.
> Another significant advantage of localised help.ubuntu.com (I realised this
> while tyring to determine how many local wikis are in good shape) is
> discoverability, since many new users are not aware of their local wikis.
> Usage of help.ubuntu.com allows having a link in the Firefox help menu or a
> link in the Firefox startup page for easy discoverability.
> In short having a localised help.ubuntu.com ensures better quality of the
> wiki, increases amount of wikis in good shape and significantly decreased
> the burden of maintainance of documentation and wiki infrastructure (maybe
> people who wrote localised help before can be encouraged to join the docs
> team). In addition help.ubuntu.com documentation can be easily discovered
> and used by end users.
> Is anyone else willing to share his/her opinion about pros and cons?
> regards
> Andrej
> --
> ubuntu-translators mailing list
> ubuntu-translators at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
>
>



-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Keimpe de Jong
(UndiFineD)