Getting Started Guide - Looking for Feedback/QA

[AviHein at gmail.com]

I apologize if anyone was insulted. Ubuntu's documentation is some of the  
best open source documentation I have seen. I'm hoping we can take  
professional tech comm to a new level in open source. But, my point was  
that great products in open source often don't have great documentation --  
this is not something from me but other sources such as:

That is, open source documentation faces unique challenges. I hope that we  
can together overcome these challenges for the benefit of Ubuntu and to  
advance its popularity among the non-developer, non-tech community and I  
hope my guide (and the future work that I will do, including edits to the  
Wiki, etc.) will help overcome these challenges within Ubuntu and the Linux  
community.

OSS Watch - http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/documentation.xml
Is Documentation Holding Open Source Back? -  
http://www.devx.com/opensource/Article/11839

Linux.com wrote about the admirable FLOSS manual project  
(http://www.linux.com/feature/155205): "Documentation is one area in which  
free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) is weakest." That is what I meant,  
but we are working to improve this.

Much work has been done to improve these challenges, and so instead of  
attacking a poor phrasing of words, let's collaborate together, using  
professional standards, to improve the quality of Ubuntu's documentation.

I apologize if anyone was offended and eagerly would ask for your feedback  
to improve the guide that I wrote (which will, in parts, be added to the  
community supported documentation and if anyone has suggestions for adding  
this to the official or community supported documenation either bundled  
with Ubuntu or on the website, I would be most grateful).

Thank you


On Feb 18, 2009 11:36am, Dougie Richardson <ddrichardson at btinternet.com>  
wrote:
> Avi Hein wrote:
>
>
> I've written a (DRAFT) getting started user manual to Ubuntu 8.10  
Intrepid Ibex. It's intended to be a user guide for Microsoft Windows and  
Mac OS users who are new to Linux and Ubuntu, fulfilling the goal of Ubuntu  
as a desktop OS. As such, I've completely avoided the terminal and only  
provided GUI instructions for user tasks.
>
>
>
> This is in DRAFT form (hence the restricted license, I will release the  
final version with an open license) and I am looking for your feedback,  
suggestions, and corrections (particularly technical, but also style) and  
QA on this document. I'm an entry-level technical writer, so this should be  
at least as "good" as a commercial user guide (documentation being one of  
the biggest weakness in much open source software).
>
>
>
> It's available for 30 days via MediaFire at  
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d359e96a2500985424a64199ac7f73e5e04e75f6e8ebb871  
but the earlier your corrections, suggestions, and QA the better (I plan on  
having it in final format by next Monday). Please let me know (at  
avihein at gmail.com avihein at gmail.com>) your thoughts, suggestions, etc.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
> Avi Hein
>
>
> Avi I wish you every success but posting to a list of documentation  
writers to tell them their documentation is the weakest area of OSS is a  
little insulting - intentional or not.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Dougie
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/attachments/20090217/7b43e3d5/attachment.html>