Hi Benjamin, On Thu, 2010-01-14 at 22:05 +1300, Benjamin Humphrey wrote: > Thanks for the feedback. I know it may seem like we are trying to do > the same thing as you, but in all reality we aren't.
I think that this whole matter could be put to rest if you explain exactly how what you are doing is different to what the Ubuntu system docs are doing. All I can see when I read the wiki pages is that you're doing exactly the same but in a linear (book) format. Look at the table of contents for your manual [2] and compare it with what has already been written in the system docs [3]. The topics are almost exactly the same, they're just organised differently! Even the name, "Ubuntu Manual", is virtually indistinguishable from "Ubuntu System Documentation". In the "Justification" section on the wiki page [1], you say "The Community Docs are excellent, but unfortunately are not structured for complete beginners and do not necessarily follow one guideline". I assume, by Community Docs, you mean the system documentation which can be found by clicking System -> Help and Support. We try hard to structure them for beginners, and we follow pretty stringent style guidelines. In what ways are we failing? I don't think we're doing so badly that a complete rewrite in a different style is required. I'm also extremely confused about who your intended users are. You said in an earlier email that "We're aimed at a different user base than the docs team", but all I can find on the wiki pages is that you're targeting "complete beginners", "absolute newcomers migrating from Windows/Mac". This doesn't define a user base. A seasoned Windows system administrator, a professor of linguistics and a six-year-old child could both be absolute newcomers to Ubuntu, but that doesn't mean that they'll understand the same documentation! Please make sure you have good answers to these questions. I'm extremely concerned that you're making the same mistakes that everyone always makes, hence the proliferation of not-so-great documentation in the open source community. (As a matter of note, I'd like to encourage people to criticise our current documentation offerings. Constructive criticism leads to improvement. I don't mind people advertising for contributors or discussing other documentation on the ubuntu-doc list either.) Thanks, Phil [1] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual#Justification [2] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual/TableOfContents [3] - https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/index.html -- Phil Bull https://launchpad.net/people/philbull _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual Post to : ubuntu-manual@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
