Hello Andrej, Great work, I can see why you like it. What I am wary of though, is that documenters and translators already have so much to do.
= Who what where when why how = What is the additional maintenance ? 2011/5/5 Andrej Znidarsic <[email protected]>: > Hello! > Yesterday I wrote a short email why having a localised help.ubuntu.com is a > good idea. > I have been talking to David Planella on IRC and realised I didn't > understand how localised help.ubuntu.com is supposed to work at the time. > Now i realised it has many more advantages as I thought. > So I decided (in absence of other replies) to write a bit longer argument > why i believe localisable help.ubuntu.com is a great idea for loco teams. ;) > Now i know the same strings are used both for help in ubuntu (software) and > help on help.ubuntu.com. This means that translation teams don't have to do > any extra work to have a localised help.ubuntu.com and greatly decreases > amount of work required to have a translated online help. > Many teams (including Slovenian Loco team) occasionaly experience a decrease > in activity and hence aren't able to update documentation on wiki (this is > now much more noticeable when unity is here). Even if teams have enough > contributors I believe community documentation is of inherently lower > quality. Firstly it's difficult not to miss something out, and docs team IMO > does better work at this since it's more structured/organized than most of > local documentation teams. > In additon most users who edit local wikis are close to normal users and are > not in contact with the developers as much as the docs team. This means > editors of local wikis are not familiar with all the changes between relases > and need to discover them theirselves (most often after stable release). > This meanes some minor changes or features are only found at a later time or > not at all (especially minor changes such as changed menus or options > somewhere deep in a menu for example). Therefore local community based > documentation will be always less complete and/or updated at a later time. > This can be very important as most users tend to try ubuntu in the first few > weeks after stable release and existing users usually read the documentation > in the first few weeks after stable release too, to see what is new or to > seek help with changed options/programs. So if the local docs teams > functions ok, it will be slightly incomplete/out of date. I quickly checked > a couple of local wikis. While I don't posess a linguistic knowledge to > determine if the content is updated/good quality in my opinion about 10-20 > wikis in total has a significant amount of content. > Another significant advantage of localised help.ubuntu.com (I realised this > while tyring to determine how many local wikis are in good shape) is > discoverability, since many new users are not aware of their local wikis. > Usage of help.ubuntu.com allows having a link in the Firefox help menu or a > link in the Firefox startup page for easy discoverability. > In short having a localised help.ubuntu.com ensures better quality of the > wiki, increases amount of wikis in good shape and significantly decreased > the burden of maintainance of documentation and wiki infrastructure (maybe > people who wrote localised help before can be encouraged to join the docs > team). In addition help.ubuntu.com documentation can be easily discovered > and used by end users. > Is anyone else willing to share his/her opinion about pros and cons? > regards > Andrej > -- > ubuntu-translators mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators > > -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Keimpe de Jong (UndiFineD) -- ubuntu-translators mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
