Recent Doc Team meeting - Poll idea (Do people really use computer-based help?)

[Jim Byrnes]

On 05/09/2014 03:14 PM, Peter Matulis wrote:
> On 05/09/2014 01:51 PM, Penelope Stowe wrote:
>> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Peter Matulis
>> <peter.matulis at canonical.com <mailto:peter.matulis at canonical.com>> wrote:
>>
>>      Last Wednesday (May 7) we there was a Doc team meeting [1] and an idea
>>      surfaced that an attempt be made to determine the general level of
>>      readership/usage of the help/doc facility in Ubuntu (Desktop).
>>      Including this facility involves participation in a rigid set of
>>      development/packaging rules & schedule that may not be worth the
>>      trouble.
>>
>>      Preliminary poll:
>>
>>      << Do people think conducting such a poll is worthwhile? >>
>>
>>
>> Who would targeted as responders to said poll? If you only poll current
>> Ubuntu users, you're probably going to get a different answer than if
>> you poll current users as well as trying to get answers from current
>> Windows and MacOS users who could potentially use Ubuntu down the road.
>> I've done informal polling of this exact question among people I know
>> and there's definitely a difference between the people I know who use
>> Ubuntu (who tend to be slightly more technologically savvy) and those
>> who use Windows/MacOS, but are part of the stated target of making
>> Ubuntu friendly to/usable by everyone.
>>
>> My opinion on whether a poll would be useful does depend on knowing who
>> would be the target of such a poll. There are ways to get non-technical
>> and non-Ubuntu users to answer a poll on this question. If there's no
>> decided target, then I will give a longer explanation of my thoughts.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts Penelope.
>
> I think polling Ubuntu users is good enough since there are former
> Windows/Mac users among them.  But you raise an interesting point:  do
> we want to know whether a user will even *look* for in-computer help?
> My original idea was to determine to what degree Ubuntu users first
> *know* about it and, if so, whether they *use* it.
>
> I would rather avoid a hypothetical question such as: "If you were an
> Ubuntu user would you look for in-computer help?".
>
> Thoughts?
>
> peter matulis
>
>

Interesting question.  Until I read this thread I had forgotten about in 
computer help, so I went looking for it.  I am running 12.04 and there 
is no help icon on the top bar or the launcher.  It's possible that 
there was one on the launcher and I removed it, but I don't remember 
doing so.  I clicked the little gear at the top right corner of the top 
bar and didn't see any help there.  Finally I typed help into the dash 
search bar then I was able to access the in computer help.

In 10.04 as I think there was a help item in the menus on the top bar. 
I guess what I am saying is if you want people to use it, it should be 
more accessible.

I was new to linux when I started using 10.04 so I remember reading the 
in computer help at that time.  Now I usually google first and then come 
here with questions.  I guess I am saying that the more experience a 
user has the less they use the in computer help.

Regards,  Jim