Xubuntu documentation & the new website

[George Lesica]

> Additionally, would we consider unofficial community docs (ala the Ubuntu
> Community help pages [3])?  Such a section would invite participation from
> Xubuntu bloggers and hackers (and hacker/bloggers) who are already writing
> up these how-to's on their blogs.  Contributions might include items like
> putting compiz-fusion on Xubuntu, and other helpful tips.  These
> contributions may eventually wind up as part of the official docs.

I am sooooo in favor of this idea. If you think about it, we end up
duplicating a ton of stuff when we do the docs in general. Now, this
can't be helped to a certain extent of course since not everyone who
writes how-tos for his or her blog wants to get involved in the docs
or license their text so we can use it verbatim. However, making it as
easy as possible for people to contribute is definitely a good idea.

To be honest, for anyone who is at all "web savvy" google is a much
more useful resource than the docs or even the ubuntu wiki. I've never
actually used the docs myself, even when I was a total newb figuring
out how to do stuff. I was able to get away with using google and the
forums exclusively because ubuntu is such a popular distro that the
tubes are just overflowing with info about it.

Now, not that we shouldn't maintain docs (I can already forsee the
crabby emails... hehe). There are definitely people out there who are
not comfortable with google and the forums for various totally
legitimate reasons. Most important on that list IMO is that many
people aren't technically inclined enough to effectively judge whether
the info yielded from their google search is accurate. For instance,
the forums have had problems with people posting malicious responses
to newb questions (i.e. "just type 'sudo rm -rf /' to fix your video
card"). Of course there are also other reasons. Additionally there are
a large number of people without consistent interweb access.

Ok, that being said, my actual point is that the docs should be as
easy to contribute to as possible and so xubuntu would definitely be
doing people a service by hosting some unofficial docs in the future.

-George