Why not writing tutorials collaboratively ?

[YannBuntu]

Dear all,

In ubuntu-fr community, we put all tutorials in the wiki, and it works very well, tutorials are updated/improved by everyone.

In English-speaking Ubuntu community, contributors write their tutorials (=howto) in the "tutorial & tips" forum, and many times, the initial post is not updated and becomes obsolete (or not suited for all supported versions of Ubuntu). This makes everybody loose time, so it's not helpful for the Community.

A forum is adapted for case-by-case support. A Wiki is best suited for documentation. Tutorials ARE documentation, they should be written collaboratively. The best tool to write a documentation collaboratively is the Wiki.

Users should search information in the forum only when they don't find what they need in the Wiki. (because forums contains lots of information which is useless for readers, while the Wiki makes a synthesis)

Suggestion:
1) rename the "tutorials and tips" section into "tips" (or "tips and useful scripts" as we use at ubuntu-fr)
2) EXISTING TUTORIALS: gradually move each tutorial into the wiki. Don't delete the threads, just put in the thread a link to the adequate Wiki tutorial.
3) NEW TUTORIALS: if a contributor mistakenly creates a tutorial in the forum, moderators should encourage him to create it in the Wiki instead.

This way, the transition will be smooth.

I definitely encourage the English Commmunity to re-think the links between the Forum and the Wiki. I will create a new post about this. EDIT: here.