Do you consult the wiki? Ever?

[aysiu]

Would the wiki be better if for example it allowed screen captures and other pictures that explained processes better (similar to psychocats' tutorial pages -- which are excellent when first starting out!).

And no unfortunately I've never contributed to the wiki. Perhaps I am part of the problem.

Don't listen to people who say "If you don't like the Wiki, change it." First of all, sometimes your changes will be changed back. Secondly, you can't just go rearranging everything and renaming all the pages without serious pushback.

Since one of the major drawbacks of the Wiki is lack of organization, it really has to be a decision from the top to change the way the Wiki is maintained. Wikipedia works because it doesn't need to be organized. People don't just browse Wikipedia. They look for a Wikipedia page on a particular topic, and each page has one or more dedicated editors. The Ubuntu Wiki, if it's to be more useful, has to be delightfully explorable for new users.

Yes, screenshots would help. Better styling would help.

More importantly, though, there needs to be a vision and strict guidelines for how it's maintained. If documentation is to be helpful, it cannot be all things to all people.

If I made Psychocats as comprehensive as possible, covering every single aspect of every single subject related to Ubuntu, it would no longer be useful to new users. It would be overwhelming.

In the short term, it might be nice for the Wiki to decide to be totally comprehensive... or totally digestible. From there, it may be easier to change into a well-organized hybrid (where you would have abbreviated articles that linked to more thorough explanation).

Just my little ideas.

I might also add that HTML is a lot easier for me to edit than Wiki markup.

[kevdog]

aysiu

Strong opinions, but some of your points were dead on. I thought there was a documentation team, however to be honest, I haven't overtly found evidence of their work. Is this team still in existence?

[dizee]

I used to use the Ubuntuguide wiki religiously but it's not really needed so much anymore. The official wiki is confusing and difficult to search so I don't use it much. I agree that it gives too much information, psychocats is a much better site to refer people to.