jetpeach
January 16th, 2008, 12:55 AM
i've used ubuntuguide.org extensively in the past, but parts of it are out of date and with each new ubuntu release, the guide has been recreated and loosing info or becomming inaccurate. but perhaps more importantly, i'd prefer to refer friends learning ubuntu to the official help pages, such as
https://help.ubuntu.com/
but there are many drawbacks of these official pages.
1), they're separate from the official wiki pages and not easily updated/corrected or added to since they aren't a wiki really. sure, i understand if these are "official" they shouldn't be editable by everyone with the changes showing up immediately, but couldn't an edits be allowed and the moderators could approve them?
2) they're very difficult to search. the main page has no search boxes anywhere, i actually don't know how to search them.
3) there is no link i can find to a page containing all the documentation for all the topics, with a table of contents. this is what makes ubuntuguide.org so great - you can look thru the table of contents, click on a link and its already loaded (just takes you down the page) or you can use "find" on the page and since everything is there, it will actually find stuff... maybe the default front page shouldn't load everything, but there should be clear link to "show all topics on one page" towards the top. EDIT: i did find this "titleindex" page that has links to all the available pages, but it is not like ubuntuguide.org...
i found launchpad specifications about cleaning up and consolidating documentation that were marked "completed" in 2006, but this still seems like a problem to me. do most people search the forums, use 3rd party ubuntu guides, the ubuntu wiki, or the ubuntu help pages to find answers to their questions? wouldn't it be nice to attempt to consolidate these as much as possible, with all the most relevant info on one page? this is essentially what ubuntuguide.org did, and it was immensely popular because of it.
i'll try to find an audience to somewhere if not here, don't know how a new user is expected to find anything in this documentation (and i hate telling friends, "just search forums" because i know from personal experience that searching the forums can eat lots of lots of time with unnecessary information/threads tangent to what you're really looking for...
my 2 cents...
jet
https://help.ubuntu.com/
but there are many drawbacks of these official pages.
1), they're separate from the official wiki pages and not easily updated/corrected or added to since they aren't a wiki really. sure, i understand if these are "official" they shouldn't be editable by everyone with the changes showing up immediately, but couldn't an edits be allowed and the moderators could approve them?
2) they're very difficult to search. the main page has no search boxes anywhere, i actually don't know how to search them.
3) there is no link i can find to a page containing all the documentation for all the topics, with a table of contents. this is what makes ubuntuguide.org so great - you can look thru the table of contents, click on a link and its already loaded (just takes you down the page) or you can use "find" on the page and since everything is there, it will actually find stuff... maybe the default front page shouldn't load everything, but there should be clear link to "show all topics on one page" towards the top. EDIT: i did find this "titleindex" page that has links to all the available pages, but it is not like ubuntuguide.org...
i found launchpad specifications about cleaning up and consolidating documentation that were marked "completed" in 2006, but this still seems like a problem to me. do most people search the forums, use 3rd party ubuntu guides, the ubuntu wiki, or the ubuntu help pages to find answers to their questions? wouldn't it be nice to attempt to consolidate these as much as possible, with all the most relevant info on one page? this is essentially what ubuntuguide.org did, and it was immensely popular because of it.
i'll try to find an audience to somewhere if not here, don't know how a new user is expected to find anything in this documentation (and i hate telling friends, "just search forums" because i know from personal experience that searching the forums can eat lots of lots of time with unnecessary information/threads tangent to what you're really looking for...
my 2 cents...
jet