________________________________
From: Marc Paré<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, 7 February 2013, 15:46
Subject: [libreoffice-documentation] Re: Questions galore!
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)
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