The value of separating the doc wiki

[Ross Bigelow]

The following paragraph summarizes some thoughts that I have been having
surrounding the overall documentation process;

"*And about that "official" thing...* Much of the "unofficial" help written
on the wiki is contributed by volunteers just as knowledgeable as those
writing the official docs on help.ubuntu.com. The wiki has a lot of reliable
help, along with some less reliable, so help.ubuntu.com is sacrificing a lot
of comprehensiveness in return for not much extra trustworthiness." (
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetterWikiDocs?action=diff&rev1=50&rev2=47)


I feel that these two sets of documentation (official and unofficial) should
be sequentially developed rather then in parallel. Currently, it seems that
doc group is maintaining 2 or 3 different versions of the same document,
each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

 For example the installation wiki is very comprehensive (but need
polishing), the installation guide on the CD is extremely detailed (but
dated) and the "official" doc group installation guide has apparently not be
started.

I guess what I am proposing is that the wiki be viewed as the first level of
document development and collaboration. The community develops and updates
this "unofficial" documentation. Then the core documentation members act
like newspaper editors by revising, polishing, and selecting appropriate
content for the official documentation repositories.

I believe that such as system would provide more people with the ability to
contribute to the documentation process, and reduce the amount of
"reinventing the wheel". Given the short development cycle of Ubuntu, the
documentation need to be very rapidly created and redeveloped every 6
months.

R.
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