What are we doing wrong?

[Vishnoo]

On Sun, 2010-01-17 at 10:36 -0800, Dylan McCall wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-17 at 10:48 +0000, Phil Bull wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> > 
> > I've been reading the comments in news articles [1][2] about the Ubuntu
> > Manual. No-one knows that the system docs exist. Seriously, read them.
> > They think that the wiki is the closest thing we have to official docs.
> > 
> > What are we doing wrong? My hunches are:
> > 
> >       * People don't think to look in the System menu, or they don't
> >         think that clicking the "Help and Support" button will actually
> >         be helpful.
> >       * People just use Google anyway, because it's faster and they're
> >         more familiar with it.
> >       * We aren't promoting ourselves enough.
> > 
> > What do people think?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Phil
> 
> I have two possible explanations:
> 
>       * The Help and Support launcher is nestled between items people
>         looking for help care nothing about. What is the "and Support"
>         part, anyway?

Yup , i found that wierd too and I'v already fixed that in
lp:humanity.  ;) 

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/37998230/Screenshot-Ubuntu%20Help%
20Center.png

>       * The landing page looks ugly. I can see why someone would
>         automatically assume the worst and seek out other documentation.
>         The Mallard project is making great leaps to improve the look
>         and (more importantly) the feel of documentation around the
>         desktop, so there is hope if that move happens quickly (and
>         properly). Some issues:
>               * Weird background picture. The lifesaver metaphor is not
>                 used in the default icon theme, and that type of
>                 semi-transparent background image style is not used
>                 elsewhere.
>               * Blue?
>               * Topic links have a really big font. Seems to clash with
>                 the title fonts.
>               * Inconsistent styling _within_ the help pages. Again,
>                 Mallard seems to generate nicer pages, so we can
>                 probably leave this be as long as everything moves to
>                 Mallard at some point. Would be nice to get the landing
>                 page lined up with it, though.
>               * How often are the Common Questions updated? "Enabling
>                 visual effects" strikes me as odd since they are enabled
>                 by default, and if they aren't they probably can't be.
>                 On that topic, I noticed that one links to a Visual
>                 Effects help page which has no body content; it just
>                 links to help pages inside it in two different places.
>                 The first one is "what are visual effects?", which has
>                 nothing to do with "enabling visual effects." (That
>                 said, the "Enabling extra effects" section is nicely
>                 done. apt: links are awesome!). The "Keeping your
>                 computer updated" section under Common Questions also
>                 strikes me as something which handles itself just fine.
> 
> Oh, Yelp is also insanely slow and a source of many support questions
> itself when it starts eating every resource it can find and spitting out
> nothing in return. A big distro needs to commit serious technical
> resources to this. There is work going on to port Yelp to use Webkit
> (which will help), but the search system also needs a lot of work. As it
> is, following the only immediate advice in the landing page  (“To find
> help, insert a keyword in the search bar” - ‘never mind the nicely done
> topics on the left, subject yourselves to the ugly search system’)
> caused Yelp to hang indefinitely and chew up my processor until I
> manually killed it from the terminal. (xkill missed a spot).
> 
> Anyway, I guess the short version of this is: Body text, folks, body
> text! You can't grab peoples' attention, or for that matter help them,
> by sending them along a seemingly endless chain of links (each described
> by about 4 words) that gradually loses relevance to their original query
> as they click along.
> 
> The content, on the other hand, is really nicely done and HAS helped me
> in the past. I agree that you guys do a great job with what you do at
> the moment, but the surroundings need to be intensely reworked. I like
> what Carl has to say about embracing the issue. This is one that needs
> some attention :)
> 
> 
> Take care,
> Dylan McCall
> 
>