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

[Colin Law]

On 10 May 2014 07:39, Jonathan Aquilina <eagles051387 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I will be honest as a kubuntu desktop user, I will be honest I never turned
> to the in built help as it usually pointed to online help anyway. I just
> skip wasting time wiht the in built help and go directly and google what I
> am having a problem with.

Just a note that google is not nearly as useful for less experienced
users as good Help can be.  They do not have the experience to filter
the google results to find the useful stuff.

Colin

>
>
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:14 PM, Peter Matulis <peter.matulis at canonical.com>
> 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
>>
>>
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>
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> Jonathan Aquilina
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