What are we doing wrong?

[Alex Lourie]

Hi guys

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:29 AM, Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> I'll try to think up some nifty ideas too. We need to take the boring
> element out of documentation, and if you guys want publicity, then we need
> something big to show, something exciting that people can blog about and go
> "Ooo wow." Something that will make new users *confident *to switch to
> Ubuntu because they know that the support is fantastic. I'm not saying the
> *content* isn't fantastic, but they need to *be aware* of it first before
> they can utilize that content!
>
> You've seen how I have managed to get the manual a huge amount of
> attention, and really that was all from just a simple *idea* - we didn't
> really even have much to show for our work and in only two weeks we were
> mentioned on every major Linux site on the net. Imagine what would happen if
> we started showing off the new, revamped and re-focussed OS documentation.
> Radical thinking guys, radical thinking is what *gets stuff done.*
>
> I'm very, very keen to help out with this.
>

I understand the will to change things, even radically. But what exactly do
you have in mind? To tell you the truth, and as beautiful and wow-ing a
document can be, I see 50 pages PDF file or system help anything but
exciting. Especially for new users, or non-technical users.

I can't imagine my wife reading either manual or system help. She would
either google for quick solution, or ask me, that's for sure.

Alex.



> Cheers,
> Benjamin
>
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 4:19 AM, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Kelvin,
>>
>> On Sun, 2010-01-17 at 13:04 +0000, Kelvin Gardiner wrote:
>> > I don't think new users think of looking in the system menu. As has been
>> > mentioned most people's first thought is to go to Google. Maybe moving
>> > the menu entry to above the Software Center menu item may help, so the
>> > help item is more visible. Also, may be a link on the desktop for new
>> > installs would be good.
>>
>> I tried it on someone who has never used Ubuntu before and they looked
>> in the System menu. Maybe the menu item there doesn't look very
>> appealing/useful. I've attached a mockup of how we could modify that.
>> There's a "Tutorials" item and a "Fixing Common Problems" item. Let me
>> know what you think.
>>
>> > In terms of promotion. Maybe more promotion would help. But I think that
>> > a new project for a single document is probably more attractive, and so
>> > will gain more publicity, than updating  the less exciting sounding
>> > system docs. It would be good to see the manual promote the existence of
>> > and getting involved with the system docs.
>>
>> We can put the system docs into a single document reasonably easily,
>> perhaps with some new material to help it link together better, but
>> without duplicating much stuff. I agree that it has attracted a lot of
>> publicity, which we should try to use if we can.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Phil
>>
>> --
>> Phil Bull
>> https://launchpad.net/people/philbull
>>
>> --
>>
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>> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Benjamin Humphrey
>
> Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
> Dunedin, New Zealand
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
> www.interesting.co.nz
> www.benjaminhumphreyphotography.com
>
>
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>
>
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