Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==========================================
Much is written here and in the Mandrake forums that can be found nowhere else. Problems presentled here are generally pursued to a solution or set aside if none can be found. After hassling with these problems since the release of 7.0 and learning quite a bit along the way, I feel very strongly that there is one major, serious, and potentially damaging hole in greater adoption of Mandrake that needs to start being addressed now. This hole is the absence of organized, graded and thorough documentation. I have hard copies of much of the material currently available that directly affects my system. I suspect that most of the others here, particularly those who regularly answer questions, have done something similar. With the arrival of beta 3 of Mandrake 8.2, this ad hoc approach must start coming to an end. Information spread across man pages, on distro docs, how-to's, faq's is information not often found by those who need it. At the beginning of the week I have joined the forum at http://www.mandrakeuser.org and have been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised. The documentation section, for those who have not been there, is first rate, yet produced by just one person who is straining under the load. There are some extremely competent problem-solvers in the forum as well as some extremely bad ones, most of whose ill-formed advice remains uncorrected because ofthe clumsiness of the web interface. While many here (myself included) would not give up the free-for-all that is this newsgroup and the folks over at the Mandrake Forums would not want to give up the web interface, there has to be a way of bringing the knowledge being both collected and created together in one place and then systematically indexing it so that those searching can find it. There has to be a way of bringing together Mandrake-related information from the Web and Usenet. The many programs on the Mandrake distro need to identified and explained beyond the cryptic titles that cause many to be overlooked. The amount raised by the Mandrake Club would not pay a top flight technical writer for a year much less meet the volumes of information required here. What is needed is a mechanism to correct this problem. In another thread on another subject, Guido Draheim suggested creating our own CD of material to accompany Mandrake, but as emerged in the discussion, how? who, etc. Producing a CD of documentation is as large an undertaking but can involve many, more people. For the routine instructions, individual users can take a program and write it up. Some of our more literate particpants can edit the material, and it can be posted to a web site for all to take a whack at. For the more serious problems, we have our own supremely qualified experts who can sift through the problems presented here and coherently organize and edit the answers that are given out anyway. Others who do not feel comfortable writing, can scour the newsgroups and web sites for material relevant to Mandrake and the programs included with the distro. I do not see this as happening with 8.2 but maybe 8.3. I see it as a group endevour independent of Mandrake in the interest of objectivity. This would be far greater payback than membership in the Mandrake Club, and give them a leg up in the corporate marketplace they are justifiably pursuing while guaranteeing a broad base of individual users. An idea worth considering? Bluebeard.
