New guy signing up for mentoring

[Phil Bull]

Hi Shawn,

On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 08:57 -0500, Shawn Dream wrote:
> I'm committed to learning more about Ubuntu because I believe in it's
> philosophy strongly.
> 
> I'm signing up for mentoring and to get involved in the documentation
> process because I believe that documentation and bug fixing is the
> biggest hurdle keeping people from being able to use and improve their
> computers freely with Ubuntu. 
> 
> I've worked with Linux off an on for many years, jumping in, doing
> some stuff, then getting repulsed because everything was too chaotic,
> too hard, too undocumented.  With the solidity of the Ubuntu
> community, I hope that I can personally break the documentation
> barrier for myself, and really help others figure out why and how
> their systems work. 

Welcome to the team!

> There are two main things I'd like to help get rolling on
> documentation.
> 
> 1) 7.10 - where the heck are the docs?  https://help.ubuntu.com/ still
> lists 7.04 as the most recent stable version.  That's more than 20
> days clearly behind the times, not even decent for snail mail speed,
> let alone internet speed.  I'm hoping there's a draft 7.10 tab waiting
> somewhere for approval, and if not I want to get cranking on one, and
> also start one for Hardy Heron.

The documentation on help.ubuntu.com (excluding the 'Community' tab) is
just an HTML version of the documentation which is installed by default
on Ubuntu; users can all access the most recent documentation by
pressing System -> Help and Support. The HTML version for 7.10 isn't
listed because it hasn't been uploaded yet. Hopefully this will be fixed
in the near future.

> 2) Improve the central documentation.  Forums are not a complete
> solution, and neither is a wiki.  If a Wiki is too open it becomes
> untrustable junk, and if it is too closed it becomes out of date and
> inapplicable to the needs of the community too quickly.  My ideal
> solution is a live tree.  The hard branches of closed wiki should
> provide a rational framework for people to be able to navigate towards
> what they need, and they should be able to submit soft leaves of
> suggestions or issues that are not addessed in that branch.  This
> provides managed stability and clarity, while encouraging constructive
> community feedback and help. 
[...]

We have much more in terms of support infrastructure than the forums and
the wiki. There's also the system documentation, IRC, Ubuntu Answers [1]
and the mailing lists, along with various third-party resources.

Your concerns about the wiki are valid, and are the subject of a spec
[2]. However, we're looking at ways of solving these problems using the
existing software rather than creating something entirely new.

Thanks,

Phil

[1] - https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/
[2] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpWikiQualityAssurance

-- 
Phil Bull
http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull