Hi Robinson, I will answer the FAQ questions as I am involved in this. Answers inline.
Le 2013-02-07 02:43, Robinson Tryon a écrit :
* Did the urls for the "general faq" change recently? A number of volunteers have used the "general faq" as a reference when answering questions on the Ask site. In one case, I used an entry regarding java dependencies to answer a user's question on whether java was required to use Base. When I checked the URL later, I found that it was redirected/missing, with a "Page not found" error: original url: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/ now redirects to (Page not found): https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java You can find the original content here: http://web.archive.org/web/20121105054406/http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/faq/general-faq/does-libreoffice-require-java/ We can't ensure that externally-linked content will always remain available, but it would be great if we could provide permalinks for our internal documentation. That way, questions that we answer with links to the docs will remain relevant and helpful for a much longer period of time.
The FAQ section was indeed changed to the "About Us" section after a discussion on the marketing list that I initiated. The rationale behind this is/was that the FAQ was not being used for LibreOffice specific questions and had been set up in 2010 prior to Ask.LibreOffice.org. The Ask site was put together in order to provide users with a more organized zone for such information as well as to replace the FAQ.
Before moving the FAQ, I looked for, and found, the answers to all questions on the FAQ's that related to question regarding "problem fixing" with LibreOffice on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site. These FAQ items were then purged from the FAQ and the FAQ was moved to the "About Us" section.
As well, the larger questions then remaining on the FAQ related to the TDF/LibreOffice project. Thus, the About Us section was decided as the most appropriate section of the site to post it. So, the FAQ on the About Us section is not a general LibreOffice FAQ section for trouble shooting, but an FAQ with regards to historical questions relating to the community/project and of information relating to Licensing question, which we must publish as per LGPL rules. BTW, the FAQ may even be cut back even further once I we update the site a bit more. IMO, that particular FAQ will not appear in its present state for long, this, of course depending on our (marketing or website or ...) prioritized "to-do" lists.
Speaking of FAQs... * We have 3+ FAQs and the Ask site -- what can we do to reduce repetition? (DRY) There's one FAQ on the main website, one on the wiki, plus a small dev faq: -https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/faq/ -https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq -https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/FAQ The Ask site is perhaps the newest addition, but contains many more questions (~3000), a good number of which are related to or could be answered by the three existing FAQs. Content on the Ask site is licensed under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, and so good answers (and good questions) may easily be integrated back into one of the existing FAQs. Similarly, content from the existing FAQs (including unanswered questions) could easily be introduced at the Ask site, which may provide an easier format for asking and answering questions. Has anyone suggested a plan for better integration of these tools? I can see benefits of maintaining a concise FAQ for some common, key questions, but I worry about costs of keeping information relevant and up to date if we have the same content duplicated across multiple pages on multiple sites.
I have gone to all three FAQ's and have found no duplication of information. In fact all three FAQ's are quite specific to their particular area which is where I would assume a user/members would go to first look/find an answer to their question. But, reasonably speaking, our sites are quite large, and even I get lost with the amount of information available on the pages (especially the wiki).
I am sorry if the "Get Help" FAQ move caused this headache. Let me know if there has been a loss of some important information and I will make arrangements to post it back onto the Ask.LibreOffice.org site for future reference.
As for the duplication of the FAQ of information and the Ask.LibreOffice.org site as well as of updating/syncing this information -- no, no such discussions have occurred. Be aware, that from time to time these FAQ may be rationalized depending on their various team's decisions, also be aware that the product of the FAQ information on the wiki pages are not from user questions BUT more from the contributing members organizing of the information/materials ... so, sometime, the information is more relative to the contributing member and not a regular user.
HOWEVER, the bottom line is that we are here to help our users with questions and to provide them with the best answers we can possibly offer. IMO, most questions users ask on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site are probably best answered there, and, IMO, I don't see a reason to work on any user-related FAQ when the Ask.LibreOffice.org site is probably the best type of solution for a good living/breathing FAQ site.
My question to you now is this; have the mods/admins discussed eliminating duplicated questions on the Ask.LibreOffice.org site in order to make it more effective?
Cheers, Marc -- Marc Paré [email protected] http://www.parEntreprise.com parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF) parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
