reliability of information on forums

[wpshooter]

Can someone tell me how dependable is the technical information that is generally given & found on the Ubuntu forums and on the various help, wiki, & faq sites ?

Is there someone that has oversight responsibilities for checking this information for accuracy and reviewing the information to be sure that old outdated information is no longer being offered and maintained on various places on the Ubuntu webpages ? And according to what I understand, most anyone can make modification to this information but it seems that someone/entity should be reviewing ALL of the information on these sites. I am not under the impression that this would be a small task !!!

Is seems to me that as newer versions of the Ubuntu software is developed and released that it becomes very important that old outdated technical information is either culled off of the site or is clearly labeled as information for OLDER versions of the operating system, so that when a forum users searchs on various topics that they do not wind up getting old outdated technical information.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the help we can get and give, but it seems to me that it is very important that the information being dispersed on the Ubuntu websites be done in as scientific & structured manner as possible and it would seem to me that this will be even more important as Ubuntu becomes more and more widely used by the general public.

Thanks.

[aysiu]

There's a lot of information that's outdated, but I think you can see the last time a page was updated. Also many tutorials are for specific versions of Ubuntu (Breezy, Hoary, Warty), so that might indicate they're out of date.

For my own documentation (on the Psychocats site), I usually update it as I find out new information, and if I have incorrect information, another forum user usually lets me know, and I fix it. No formal structure in place for that, though.

I'm not sure if it's different for the official documentation, though.

[az]

Is there someone that has oversight responsibilities for checking this information for accuracy and reviewing the information to be sure that old outdated information is no longer being offered and maintained on various places on the Ubuntu webpages ? And according to what I understand, most anyone can make modification to this information but it seems that someone/entity should be reviewing ALL of the information on these sites. I am not under the impression that this would be a small task !!!

Is seems to me that as newer versions of the Ubuntu software is developed and released that it becomes very important that old outdated technical information is either culled off of the site or is clearly labeled as information for OLDER versions of the operating system, so that when a forum users searchs on various topics that they do not wind up getting old outdated technical information.


You are describing the Doc Team. Whenever a wiki page gets updated, people who subscibe to that page get notified, so most pages are being watched.

There are also many guidelines to follow which make it easy for the information for new releases to be consistent alongside the information for old releases.

Any questions you have about specifics should be brought to the Docteam mailing list.

I encourage anyone to join the Docteam and start contributing.

As for the other (unofficial) sources of documentation, they are scattered and do not usually follow any guidelines, YMMV....