Forums, wikis and other corners of the Ubuntu web

[Henrik]

Hi,

azz recently posted this this positive suggestion (http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2005-May/002227.html) to the Ubuntu doc mailing list. I'd like to pursue this question further:
How can we tie the forum, wiki and other site components closer together and improve the information flow between them? Lots of great answers are being given to great questions here. How can we harness that information into a more structured form?

Essentially this is just a large information flow problem. How to best channel a steady stream of fairly randomly distributed (but useful) information into a structured system, while removing irrelevant, redundant and outdated stuff? Can we make it easier to find the information by browsing and/or searching than by asking?

Tools can help, but what are the right tools? If you keep stuffing new information into a wiki it soon also overflows and becomes unmanageable. How about a wiki system that is sensitive to time in the same way that a forum is, so that old pages drop out of site? Pages that are updated and kept current would be more prominent. A fresh wiki every month, so that it never gets too large, where useful info is moved accross to a more permanent location? (I'm really just thinking aloud here)

If we set up a people section (people.ubuntulinux.org?) in the form of a wiki, would forum users want to set up pages there? If we set up Collaboration of the week (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal) sections would forum member want to participate in that? What else could we do?

Thanks for any suggestions.

- Henrik

[ubuntu-geek]

Hey Henrik!

Mako setup this site for forum/wiki/ubuntu integration if you wish to add your thoughts. :)

http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/ForumsCommunityIntegration

Glad we are finally starting to work together on things :)

[Henrik]

Hi there Ryan :)

Yes, I've seen that page. Mainly lot's of questions.

Here is another random idea: What if we set up a weekly competition? The goal would be to mine the forums for useful information, drawing together posts from various places, and collate it into a readable page.

The forum community would then vote for the best page (using the polling feature I guess). Explanatory screenshots, icons and generally good layout should be encouraged (we will eventually have some style guidelines in the doc team).

I'm not sure what we would do for prizes; something fairly symbolic I would guess.

[az]

I was in the process of answering your email...

There are many ways to mobilise the community. One is to reward the users as in a competition, assigning titles to those who contribute documentation - much like the "vip" or "contributer" title.

I think the most important ways are to set the precedent and to encourage users to do so.

If the users find it convenient to draw on such a source of information as well as feel rewarded by contributing to it, that information will grow. The forums can help foster a sense of ownership in that information portal, or wiki page - whatever you call it.

It is mainly a matter of starting it and making the process easy to use.

[az]

From: Henrik Nilsen Omma

"Would a forum-related section of
the wiki be of any use?"


My vision would be a "community-based support" page modeled after the unofficial ubuntu guide and overseen (edited) by members of the doc team for accuracy and consistency. Perhaps Chua Wen Kiat could be asked to help, too.

Can this sort of thing be made user-friendly?

Does anyone have any other ideas?

EDIT:

Henrik, would it be possible to authenticate a user from the forums on the wiki? That is, if a forums user jumps to a wiki page from the forums, that the user can retain the ubuntuforums username and not have to register/log into the wiki? This would simplify the process for forum users to "get on the wiki"
I asked Ubuntugeek and there is nothing obvious from the vBuletin standpoint.

[Henrik]

OK, so the test wiki is up and I've made a page we can play with here: http://test.wiki.ubuntu.com/forum Feel free to add sub-categories. (use the syntax: ["/pagename"]


Henrik, would it be possible to authenticate a user from the forums on the wiki? That is, if a forums user jumps to a wiki page from the forums, that the user can retain the ubuntuforums username and not have to register/log into the wiki? This would simplify the process for forum users to "get on the wiki"
I asked Ubuntugeek and there is nothing obvious from the vBuletin standpoint.

All the Ubuntu websites authenticate against a central server at Launchpad, so it should be possible with some alterations to the board code (but it's not OSS, right?)

[az]

I think this is great. I find it difficult to use, though.

Is there a way to make an interface so that a user can log in, enter a topic name and easily (intuitively) create a page and enter content into it? As it is, one needs to have a fair bit of understanding to succeed in creating a page. I am not sure as to how to make the pages indexed, or even exist in a coherant order.

For example, several topics may need to be grouped together. I do not know how to do this.

If this can be solved, the Delta can be used as both a dumping ground for contributers as well as a coherent place to look for information. I think users would benefit from a sense of accomplishment with immediate results, as opposed to just contributing some text that may or may not be used by the doc team at a later time.

[Henrik]

I think this is great. I find it difficult to use, though.

Is there a way to make an interface so that a user can log in, enter a topic name and easily (intuitively) create a page and enter content into it? As it is, one needs to have a fair bit of understanding to succeed in creating a page. I am not sure as to how to make the pages indexed, or even exist in a coherant order.

For example, several topics may need to be grouped together. I do not know how to do this.

Look at what I've done at: http://test.wiki.ubuntu.com/forum/hardware i've made an overview page for hardware, linking in some of your existing ones. Just make a sub-page with ["/subpage"] or paste the text right into that page. Someone else might come along and restructure it into sub-pages (that's why wikis are cool)

Let's enter in more content and see how it works :) Can we get more forum users to paste in some stuff?

[rjs]

how about a section on the forum just to discuss the wiki. Although we will hopefully soon be getting talk pages, there is still some times a need to talk about issues which effect more than one page. Also, i think newbie types would be more willing to post problems with wikipages on a forum (a reasonably old (and thus better know and understood) medium compared with a wiki).

peace out,
-rjs

[az]

My forum time will be limited for the next two days, but after that I will put 100 percent of my forum time getting content on the wiki.

I just need to know what the doc team will do with this. "the Delta" is a great concept. To have a concrete endpoint for the content we post there would help me sell it better. I think the objective is to sell this concept to the forum masses.

In as precise terms as you can describe, to where will the delta flow?

[Henrik]

In as precise terms as you can describe, to where will the delta flow?
The important point is that the information will be available in a wiki format so that those wanting to make more structured documentation can start shaping it and moving it around. In a forum people enter in comments in a steady flow. Someone adds a good point and someone else replies "Yes, that's quite good, buit you should also mention ...", etc.

In a wiki, those improvements are made in the document itself, so people can collaborate on improving it. The forum has many good ideas, but it's in a fairly raw form. There are many people using the wiki who may not be Linux experts but who enjoy editing, merging and cleaning things up. Mixing the two worlds should be helpful for both groups.

A good example is this page you wrote on modems: http://test.wiki.ubuntu.com/forum/hardware/modem

I renamed it and Mauricio suggested a better mark-up for it. So a useful tip that was dumped in from the forums is now on its way to becoming a tidy document. Click the 'info' button to see how it has changed over time. As an initial contributor to a page, don't worry about the right structure and markup, just try to identify the useful information and paste it in. If the information is valuable, then someone else will come along and clean it up and place it in the right context.

[fishfork]

As someone who's joined relatively recently, I think this is an excellent idea. A Wiki makes much more sense for documentation than bits and pieces scattered all over a forum. I've added a little bit to the wiki myself on MIDI, mostly gleaned from the forums. I did run into two issues:

1. I couldn't find any instructions on how to format the pages, and found the markup language a bit confusing.

2. It was difficult to know where to add the material: should it go in FrequentlyAskedQuestions, or in a seperate page, or somewhere else?

We really need a prominent page that covers this sort of thing to encourage more people to join in. (If one already exists, my apologies - I couldn't find it.)

Edit: I've just seen the test wiki you've set up. (I should really read the thread before I post :) ) Presumably then we should contribute to the test wiki instead, and someone will move our stuff into the relevant place on the main wiki if it's good enough.

[Henrik]

Edit: I've just seen the test wiki you've set up. (I should really read the thread before I post :) ) Presumably then we should contribute to the test wiki instead, and someone will move our stuff into the relevant place on the main wiki if it's good enough.
Right. The idea is just to provide an area that is a starting point that is as easy as possible. As you become familiar with the wiki system, you can of course add content anywhere (I'll add that point to the page).

I'll add your MIDI page to the test wiki. I'd be interested to hear how the two systems compare for you. What can be improved?

Edit: see http://test.wiki.ubuntu.com/howto/MidiSoftwareSynthesis

[az]

"Let's enter in more content and see how it works Can we get more forum users to paste in some stuff?"

Okay, I have been busy for the last few days (weeks) I will now get started.

The biggest setback for new users is that that entering content is a little less straightforward. You have to think differently when dealing with a wiki...

[az]

Henrik, when I cut and paste code or terminal output from the forum into the wiki, the newlines are not recognised. I have to enter return characters by hand for every line of consol output, otherwise the result is senseless. Can this be fixed?

[Henrik]

Hey, I see you've entered a lot of pages. Cool!

The formating is a bit different on Moin than in the forum obviously. There isn't much to do about that unfortunately as it's a fundamental part of the Moin markup system. What might help though is if we write a simple wiki getting started page for forum users. (btw: some of the markup is easier, like * for bullet points) So, what are the main tips we should give?


Skip a whole line to make a new paragraph
Use '*' to make bullet points
Use {{{ some code }}} to make code blocks


We could use screenshots to make it really easy to see :)

Update: I've now made some modifications to the markup of some of your pages, esp adding {{{ code }}} code blocks. See this page (http://test.wiki.ubuntu.com/forum/hardware/ndiswrapperWithWPA) for an example.

[Henrik]

Just a quick update on what we're doing with the wiki transition for those of you who have started playing with it.

* Steve has made some changes to the transfer script so that it now
preserves the sub-page information by placing links to pages that used
to be sub-pages in the /talk pages. This preserves the information, but
doesn't create too much clutter

* We are currently testing the authentication server system which will
allow people to log in using their existing user names from the ubuntu site. When that comes on line you'll need to log on using your ubuntu.com login if you have one, or create a new one.

* We plan to do the final switch-over next Tuesday (13th) at 12.00 UK
time. The plan is to make zwiki read-only while the transfer occurs,
which should take about two hours. The URLs will then be pointed at the
Moin wiki (wiki.ubuntu.com www.ubuntu.com/wiki, etc.) existing URLs to
the current pages should then continue to work.

* The current test wiki will in effect turn into the new wiki. New
pages, such as those in forum/... will continue to live there; they will
not be erased or overwritten.

Questions, comments?

[az]

I have stooped to low levels to get the forum moderators to peek into the wiki. I will _not_ give up.

I think the wiki can serve the forums well, and vice versa.

Can the wiki use images? Can the pages be spiced up with graphics? In many cases, that would enhance the effectiveness of the page.

[Gtaylor]

I have stooped to low levels to get the forum moderators to peek into the wiki. I will _not_ give up.

I think the wiki can serve the forums well, and vice versa.

Can the wiki use images? Can the pages be spiced up with graphics? In many cases, that would enhance the effectiveness of the page.
I love Wikis and think it's a great idea to have them but ugh, the current wiki system is funky :/ Really wish they would've gone with MediaWiki which many are familiar with because of Wikipedia. I'm more apt to look in the forums first because the Wiki is so sluggish and the search mechanism isn't wonderful :(

I'm not trying to bicker, I'd just like to see some efforts made to maybe work on some page caching and improving the search feature. Also, I know MediaWiki has very very easy Image support, I hope ours does too. Images are uploaded and linked to locally by filename, which means I could have step-by-step screenshots of entire processes.

Just a handful of suggestions:

Get some page caching going to speed things up and lower server load. Try Turkcache or Memcache.
Enable the spacing of WikiLinks on the viewer side. IE: 'SomeLink' becomes 'Some Link' to browsers (not editing). This is easier on the eyes and makes the page look more natural.
There needs to be some kind of navigation structure within related sections. MediaWiki has a 'category' tag that makes this very easy and automatically generates a lettered index, maybe this has the same thing somewhere.
I haven't tried this yet but is some limited HTML allowed?

I agree, it's an issue of convenience and ease of use. Right now it appears 90% of the people are hitting up the forums for help with things. Just consider usability when browsing and editing the Wiki and hopefully we can come up with some improvements. I'd much rather have a Wiki that doesn't exactly fit into the website theme (with the pretty top banner) if it meant that we'd have something more usable.

Edit: This isn't a plug but take a look at our LUG's wiki: http://learn.clemsonlinux.org/
It doesn't have a lot of the features I'd like since it's not something I'm heavily involved with but it's a good example of some of the things I'm talking about. We had a lot of flexibility with page layout and automatically adapting dynamic content.

Another edit: http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page
These are one of our big contenders and they use what I'm talking about. Notice how it's attractive, easy to navigate, pretty snappy, and notice the automatically generated page indexes that are made from the header (== sometext ==) tags on each page.

[mattheweast]

ok Gtaylor came on irc just now and we chatted but I will reply here too :)


I love Wikis and think it's a great idea to have them but ugh, the current wiki system is funky :/ Really wish they would've gone with MediaWiki which many are familiar with because of Wikipedia. I'm more apt to look in the forums first because the Wiki is so sluggish and the search mechanism isn't wonderful :(

Ok first up, the speed problems should hopefully be solved after the transition. This should make the wiki a bit more accessible. I'm afraid that the MediaWiki point has been discussed at length but was rejected by the Ubuntu guys. I find the MoinMoin engine pretty good though and I hope that you will too!! See http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com for an example. Henrik is working hard on the new wiki and it will be very cool!


I'm not trying to bicker, I'd just like to see some efforts made to maybe work on some page caching and improving the search feature. Also, I know MediaWiki has very very easy Image support, I hope ours does too. Images are uploaded and linked to locally by filename, which means I could have step-by-step screenshots of entire processes.

Yeah the images are pretty easy, just link them using the full path to filename, including the suffix.

Just a handful of suggestions:

Get some page caching going to speed things up and lower server load. Try Turkcache or Memcache.

As above, hopefully the speed will be greatly increases after next week's transition.


Enable the spacing of WikiLinks on the viewer side. IE: 'SomeLink' becomes 'Some Link' to browsers (not editing). This is easier on the eyes and makes the page look more natural.

I don't know if this can be done. Maybe it would be nice though.


There needs to be some kind of navigation structure within related sections. MediaWiki has a 'category' tag that makes this very easy and automatically generates a lettered index, maybe this has the same thing somewhere.

MoinMoin will support these


I haven't tried this yet but is some limited HTML allowed?


Fraid not, but Moin markup, with macros, is pretty flexible and not too difficult to use. Again, check out the documentation on the http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com page.



Another edit: http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page
These are one of our big contenders and they use what I'm talking about. Notice how it's attractive, easy to navigate, pretty snappy, and notice the automatically generated page indexes that are made from the header (== sometext ==) tags on each page.
Gentoo docs are like the best docs ever :) We can aspire to compete with them. I'm sure that if we pool the quality of information being made available on the forums/wiki/ and elsewhere, we can do it!

Matt

[az]

Gentoo docs are like the best docs ever :) We can aspire to compete with them. I'm sure that if we pool the quality of information being made available on the forums/wiki/ and elsewhere, we can do it!

Matt


I hope to be organising a few events to promote this. For example, perhaps we can have a contest and award prizes to the users who contribute the greatest number of items to the forum-wiki delta over a weekend.

...Stay tuned....

...Can anyone think of any other ideas to get the concept of contributing content to the forum-wiki delta engrained into the ubuntufourms culture?

[rjs]

When i was in the shower just now, an idea came to me. It's more longterm than the wiki delta and whatnot, and would take some effort to get up and running.

Ok, there are two complaints by newbies, windows/OSX users, tech pundits and the likes against linux.
1) Not enough bling.
2) Not enough help/documentation
these two complaints are also often boiled down as just "its not user friendly"

both of these complaints are erronious, the problem is that they are not easily accesible. Bling can be got with things like Enlightenment and other stuff, but takes a reasonable amount of effort and some tech know-how. I have no solution to fix this.

The second point though i have an idea for. Help at the moment is all over the place, in wikis, forums, mailing lists, man files, info files individual sites etc. What if instead of working out how to better move info from one place to another, we made one central place where all the info would be. A fifi.

So what is a fifi? a fifi is what happens when a forum and a wiki have a kid. It would require a more industrial strength (not to mention more userfriendly) wiki than what we use at the moment as the base. I suggest mediawiki, since it is really the standard wiki software (to see mediawiki in action visit any of the wikimedia sites - wikipedia, wikinews, wiktionary etc), But instead of talk pages it would have forums. I have seen this implemented elsewhere (but not cause the guy had come up with the idea of a fifi, just cause he didnt get wikis) so it is possible. A major difference to normal wikis would be the way it is organised. Instead of the fairly flat structure of most wikis (including our current wiki) it would be divided up into sections like a forum is. For example the main page would be a quick intro and foo number of sections:


meta - for discussing wishlists, how to get ubuntu to take over the world, and the fifi
Insitillation
networking
internet
common apps
repositories
multimedia
programming
hardware


ok, im probably forgetting somethings, but it doesnt matter for the moment. In each of these you would have subsections, for example in common apps:


firefox
Open Office
xmms
Rythymbox
Nautralis
Konq
Opera
Lynx
Apache
gedit
gaim
totem
etc etc etc


now here is the crafty bit. This page would not be a real page, it would be a category page (that means that it is an automatically generated page of any page that has the tag [[Category:Common apps]] on it. The Talk/forum page for it would also be a composite list. You wouldnt be able to post a new thread on it, but you would see all the threads in the talk/forum pages of any page that had the tag [[category:Common apps]] on it (or any sub-cats within [[category:common apps]]).

Any page can have more than one category, so for example [[Apache]], [[firefox]], [[gaim]] and others would have both the category tag of [[Category:Common apps]] and [[Category:Internet]]. This makes it somewhat like gmails labels as opposed to folders. This means that people dont end up in dead ends. For example if im looking for help with firefox, i can go to either [[commonapps]], then to [[firefox]] or to [[internet]] then to [[firefox]] (or even straight to [[firefox]]). Then in firefox, once the main article gets too long, it would be split into [[firefox plugins]], [[firefox settings]] etc etc, all in [[catergory:firefox]] which is itself in [[category:common apps]] and [[category:internet]].

Anyway, getting back to the forum part of this: This was just posted -
HIya.

I've tried many distros, but since none give USB, and Ubuntu is my fav, I decided to post here.

No matter if I use 32 or 64 bit version, I have no USB at all.. I am somewhat new to linux, so please tell me what info you need to help out..

The laptop has a A64 3200+, GIG ram, NForce 3 chipset.. 5.04 64 bit is installed right now, default 2.6.10.5 kernel.

Thanks in advance.

EP

so if this had have been posted on fifi rather than here, what would have happened? EP would have clicked on the hardware section, now say that there isnt yet a [[USB]] subsection, as previously stated you cant post straight into a top level category, so EP would click on the "info im looking for isnt here" button which would take him/her to a standard forum posty thingo (whatever you call what im typing in atm) but above title there would be something called subject in which he would type USB (obviously there would be a sentence eloquently explaining what was expected of subject v. title) and then in title would type in exactly the same as what he typed in here "Compaq R3000, no USB?". This would create a wikipage called [[USB]] with the tag [[category:Hardware]] on it. It would also create an associated forum page which would contain his/her post.

The next time someone visited [[Hardware]] they would see [[USB]] as one of the subpages. If they clicked on it they would be taken to the associated forum page, untill such a time as something was put on the wikipage, then they would be taken to the wiki page which (like all pages) would have an automagic link on it saying didnt answer you question? try the forum, and would point you to the associated forum page.

Sorry this is so long, i kind of got carried away. Anyway to sum up, this would grow the wiki much faster than it is currently growing, and make it far easier to find info from past forum posts about topics similar to your own. It would add the power of categorys to the forum (unlike at the moment where it is essentially divided into folders). It would make the wiki and the forum community one and the same. Ubuntu would take over the world. Bill Gates would be forced to start begging to a street corner...

maybe some of that was wishful thinking.
Oh well.

did i at least express myself well enough that people got the general drift of what i was saying, if so what do you think?

paz y amor,
-rjs.

ps, also, lots of man pages and info pages should be pasted into the wiki/fifi, cause at the moment lots of people dont even know these things exist. They would of cause get edited over time to make them actually readable (which most are not atm).

[Henrik]

BUMP.

So we set up this feature, the forum->wiki delta, on the test wiki site and the whole thing has now been merged into the main wiki. azz made a great start of exploring the technology and moving some advice over from the forum.

It would be great to see more people getting involved in this cross-technology knowledge transfer.

You are invited! 8)

Go here (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/forum) to start.

[az]

Henrik,

Much has been going on with the forum crew. I will not go into details, but between hospitalisations, weddings, new forum guidelines, changes of employment, we are a little bit strung-out. This project has taken the back-burner for a little while.

I had found a way to get the moderators to visit the forum-wiki delta and got wonderful feedback.

This project will go forward. We discussed events during which we could get users to populate the forum-wiki delta and offer prizes.

Dates will follow..... Stay tuned....

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to visit the forum-wiki delta and add some content to it.

[rwabel]

I really like your ideas with the ForumWiki. There are 2 points which I want to discuss.
1. I don't like the name (I don't want to be unpolite)
2. Is that part of the Wiki only for HowTo's from the Forum?

I think we cannot put it on the front page of https://wiki.ubuntu.com, it would be much easier to find for newbies.

The best name would be HowTo or HowTo Index or Ubuntu HowTo's. I guess we cannot use HowTo, because there is already one, right?

Or why not Ubuntuguide?

I'm rather new to the wiki stuff, therefore I don't know what is possible and what not.

[mattheweast]

I really like your ideas with the ForumWiki. There are 2 points which I want to discuss.
1. I don't like the name (I don't want to be unpolite)
2. Is that part of the Wiki only for HowTo's from the Forum?

I think we cannot put it on the front page of https://wiki.ubuntu.com, it would be much easier to find for newbies.

The best name would be HowTo or HowTo Index or Ubuntu HowTo's. I guess we cannot use HowTo, because there is already one, right?

Or why not Ubuntuguide?

I'm rather new to the wiki stuff, therefore I don't know what is possible and what not.

Hi Ralph :)

Nice work on the wiki! What we had intended (as I understand it) was that the /forum section would be an easy way for forum users to post ANY useful information into the wiki (not just the howtos). Then the material can be integrated into the main section of the wiki, either by making new pages or by adding the information into the existing pages.

I'm making a link to the forum/ section on the FrontPage as you suggested!

I'm afraid we have no control over ubuntuguide, it is a personal website.

yours, Matt

[rwabel]

Hi Ralph :)

Nice work on the wiki! What we had intended (as I understand it) was that the /forum section would be an easy way for forum users to post ANY useful information into the wiki (not just the howtos). Then the material can be integrated into the main section of the wiki, either by making new pages or by adding the information into the existing pages.

I'm making a link to the forum/ section on the FrontPage as you suggested!

I'm afraid we have no control over ubuntuguide, it is a personal website.

yours, Matt
I understand. And what's the main section? I mean this wiki is (sorry to put it that way) a mess. I cannot find a howto section from the FrontPage.

But we can take some of the Ubuntuguide stuff in that wiki, right?

[mattheweast]

I understand. And what's the main section? I mean this wiki is (sorry to put it that way) a mess. I cannot find a howto section from the FrontPage.

You are right to say that the wiki is a mess. There is no list of howto's, the current best way to find information on something is to use the SEARCH tool in the top right. Of course this is not an ideal situation, but there is so much information on the wiki that it is hard to organise! It will improve, but it is a long process.


But we can take some of the Ubuntuguide stuff in that wiki, right?
You can do if you like, there is nothing to stop you using the information you find on other websites to improve documents on the wiki or anywhere else (subject to licencing issues). Much of the material will be already present on the wiki in other forms.

M

[rwabel]

As Gtaylor mentioned the Gentoo wiki, I find that we should structure it a bit like they have. I know one shouldn't copy from others. But especially the FrontPage should be as clean as theirs. Doesn't matter what system we use, we should be able to tidy it up!

[rwabel]

I just want to add that posting (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=250788&postcount=49) from a user.

That exactely shows the problem of the wiki.
I would dedicate some time if I can help here or there in structuring.

[az]

The name "forum-wiki delta" only really appears on the first page. Can you come up with a better name?

Please, suggest one!

[rwabel]

The name "forum-wiki delta" only really appears on the first page. Can you come up with a better name?

Please, suggest one!
what just about Ubuntu HowTo's or HowTo's or HowTo Index

But the whole structure could be changed. Please have a look at either ubuntu-fr (http://www.ubuntu-fr.org/) or ubuntu-de (http://www.ubuntu-de.org/)

they have a nice structure!
Do they have a different system? It would be great to have the wiki look like that. It's much more userfriendly!

[mattheweast]

As Gtaylor mentioned the Gentoo wiki, I find that we should structure it a bit like they have. I know one shouldn't copy from others. But especially the FrontPage should be as clean as theirs. Doesn't matter what system we use, we should be able to tidy it up!

It's not a problem to copy from others... However they do things a bit differently on the gentoo wiki, by controlling access more carefully and limiting users abilities to put things in the wrong place ;)

Our wiki does things a little differently: everyone can edit the whole of the wiki, and also its important to underline that the wiki is not just for Documentation, but has a lot of other purposes (development etc)

However in principal your point is right: there is a lot we can do to make the UserDocumentation page more accessible in order to point users to important documents in the wiki without having to use the search facility. If you want to help out, we have recently set up a team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiTeam) whose purpose it is to tidy up the wiki. A major part of that work should be to work on the UserDocumentation problem. We will coordinate our efforts via the Documentation Team mailing list (http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc). We would be glad to have your help! Obviously, you can help out without necessarily joining this team, but if you do it would help us because that way we can plan things better and people can work as a group!

thanks for your thoughts,

Matt

[az]

what just about Ubuntu HowTo's or HowTo's or HowTo Index

But the whole structure could be changed. Please have a look at either ubuntu-fr (http://www.ubuntu-fr.org/) or ubuntu-de (http://www.ubuntu-de.org/)

they have a nice structure!
Do they have a different system? It would be great to have the wiki look like that. It's much more userfriendly!


Do you mean the front pages, or the wiki pages (http://www.ubuntu-de.org/wiki/)?

As for the name, well it is a knowledgebase, so it is more than how-to's. If we named it that, people would be misled.

But if you think that "forum-wiki delta" is ugly, let's change it. I would not want people to stay away from it because they think it is some wierd thing...

[rwabel]

It's not a problem to copy from others... However they do things a bit differently on the gentoo wiki, by controlling access more carefully and limiting users abilities to put things in the wrong place ;)

Our wiki does things a little differently: everyone can edit the whole of the wiki, and also its important to underline that the wiki is not just for Documentation, but has a lot of other purposes (development etc)

However in principal your point is right: there is a lot we can do to make the UserDocumentation page more accessible in order to point users to important documents in the wiki without having to use the search facility. If you want to help out, we have recently set up a team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WikiTeam) whose purpose it is to tidy up the wiki. A major part of that work should be to work on the UserDocumentation problem. We will coordinate our efforts via the Documentation Team mailing list (http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc). We would be glad to have your help! Obviously, you can help out without necessarily joining this team, but if you do it would help us because that way we can plan things better and people can work as a group!

thanks for your thoughts,

Matt
good idea. I'll join and give my inputs. I hope we can change it to be well structured. Looking forward to helping out

@azz I meant both. I like the whole webpage from them. Their wiki is well structured and especially the icons are great. We definitely need icons too. Maybe we can use the same?

Can't we just merge forum-wiki and the acutal howto to one great well structured howto. It shouldn't matter were the information/howto acutal come from. But I guess that is not up to other people to decide.

oh and btw where are the acutal howto's from ubuntu wiki?

[rwabel]

I see some overlapping things with https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions, http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/faq/ and the howto's. Maybe we can consolidate them. howto's should be in the FAQ in my opinion. At least not when we want to have a huge howto section.

[mattheweast]

My opinion is that distinguishing between FAQs, Howto's and Tips is problematic because there is no clear line between them.

You are right, the two things overlap. Don't worry about this: overlaps and difficulties are always going to happen in a wiki: users can write what they want, that is both the advantage and disadvantage of the wiki. We do not need to worry about trying to make it perfect, but only improving it.

The problem that you have identified is: the documentation is difficult to find. Ok, we can do something about this. The UserDocumentation page can be improved by pointing to links, but most of all we can work on categorising all the documentation so that it is available on a single Category page. If you see a good piece of documentation, give it the Category "Documentation". This will mean that it will appear on the CategoryDocumentation page, and we can point users there if they are looking for a list of documentation on the wiki.

Matt

[az]

"Can't we just merge forum-wiki and the acutal howto to one great well structured howto. It shouldn't matter were the information/howto acutal come from. But I guess that is not up to other people to decide."

The point of the forum-wiki delta is for forums users to have an easy access to the wiki. Perhaps in that context, overlap is not avoidable?

I do not know. My job is to get people from the forums to contribute there. If a user like yourself can give it a better structure in keeping with its purpose, that would be great.

[rwabel]

If I may give my idea of the Documentation part of the wiki.

Newbie (or maybe a better name than newbie )
Installation
Hardware & Driver
Software
Unoffical Ubtunuguide (and put a warning about its risks)
Now I would put under newbie all the links from:

UserDocumentation (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDocumentation) - In these pages you can find information on how to use and get help for your Ubuntu System.


Kubuntu (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kubuntu) - Here you can find all documentation concerning Kubuntu, Ubuntu with the KDE desktop!
These must also get some cleaning :-)

Under Installation, I would put all the links from UserDocumentation (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDocumentation) which concerns the installation of ubuntu

Finally the important part would be the Hardware and software section. We can put there all howto's, faq, forum wiki delta stuff, and all other kind of tutorials and hints. These 2 sites must also get a good structure . We can discuss that later too.

I think it would however be good to put a link to the ubuntuguide, but with a remark about the risks or disadvantages.

I see now the sense of the forum wiki delta. Correct howto's from there should then go in the software or hardware section. It's somehow good to have a "beta" howto (forum wiki delta) section for new howto's. Then some users can just put their howto's directly in the sections and some others which aren't sure or a new, can then howto in the "beta" howto.

What do you guys think about that? Could that be realized? Shall I post that in the mailinglist?

Am I allowed to make the changes or how does it work?

Thanks for letting me give inputs

[mattheweast]

Your enthusiasm is great to see! Feel free to edit the wiki pages as you wish: that is how a wiki works.

A couple of points however on what you've mentioned: don't worry about making a distinction between "newbie" documentation or otherwise: the fewer distinctions we make, the simpler and easier the wiki will be (in my opinion).

If you want to make some sections in UserDocumentation (such as Hardware, Software etc) in which you put links to documents, that is fine by me.

If you want help just mail our list or come into our irc channel and we will help you out. If you want someone to check your work and give a second opinion, we can do that too.

:)

Matt

[rwabel]

so you tell me, that I just can go ahead and make changes on the wiki structure? Will there be any chance to undo, in the case people don't like it or it's wrong?
I'll check out the irc channel

[mattheweast]

As I said before, all users are free to modify the pages on the wiki. If you modify the structure on the UserDocumentation page you should discuss the changes on the Documentation team mailing list, as it says on that page.

Don't worry about making mistakes: changes are easily rolled back using the diff system of our wiki software.

Matt

[az]

What do you think of a member of the doc team validating forum-wiki delta entries?

For example, I make a page and refer to it when offering support on the forums. Now, I think my information is correct, and it seems to be helping the users I refer to it, but perhaps some authority can take a look at the page and sign it.

For example, a line at the bottom of the page saying:

"This page was validated be Corey Burger on 2005-07-12"

This would add credibility to the entries and make the knowledgebase more appealing. As well, since going through this information can be a gradual process, if the doc team wanted to make a document out of the information there, they would have a record of what was looked at and what was not.

If the doc-team member has a problem with a page, they can state why that is at the bottom of the page and the information can then be corrected in an appropriate way.

I think some people who critticise the Ubuntuguide have different reasons for each section for not liking it. This process can help iron out these problems before they become written in stone.