Ubuntu Wiki

There is not yet a Launchpad blueprint for this spec, although the blueprints of the LiveTree project reflect some of my goals. Please contribute here and contact me, so we can work on firming up these ideas into solid improvements.

• Launchpad Entry: noneyet

• Packages affected:

Work in progress, early drafting.

Summary

Currently information about how to use Ubuntu is spread across many locations and lacks cross-referencing and consolidation. This spec outlines methods of consolidating the offline help, wiki help, forum help and links to external help sites into a single cohesive resource. We attempt to show ways to do this cleanly, saving much work and vastly improving the user experience.

Release Note

(Hypothetical release notes) The installed help utility is now integrated with online help resources, seamlessly referring users to additional resources and allowing caching of updated bugs, tips, and howto's for the currently installed versions of all programs.

Rationale

When someone needs help with a program, having all the information in one clear and up to date location is much better than having to search dozens of sites, miss dozens of others and hope the information you find is accurate. By enhancing the wiki system to incorporate as many of our support types as possible, you drive most activity to the same point, thus finding and solving issues fastest.

With the wiki system receiving much more activity, it's information is ever riper for the offline docs to leverage. The docteam can kill two birds with one stone by managing the core structure of the wiki. When they organize and approve essential sections of the wiki for offline caching, their managed sections automatically provide the live wiki with an sturdy skeleton on which to grow more user-tended content.

Use Cases

Bob is having trouble with a program. He checks the installed help tool and follows the links from that packages usage and howto page to the user reported problems page. He does not find his problem in the common problems list, but finds his error message reported recently by another user. There are no suggested solutions yet, so he clicks the "me too" button on that error and goes to check other resources.

Suzy and Jim are experienced users of that package, and they are both there to submit short howto suggestions for that page. They see the increasingly popular error and immediately recognizes it as a misconfiguration of a system file about which this program is picky. Their responses to the problem suggesting a fix causes all the people who clicked "me too" on that problem to be notified of feedback/activity.

Joe had reported the issue and got the notification. When he tried her fix it worked, and he closed his issue with "fixed" pointing to their comments. He is one of several who do this, increasing the visibility of their solutions. Someone else soon writes up a nice suggestion explaining this as a common problem with a conflicting package, and how to resolve it.

Sadly, however, there is a gap and no editors are watching that page at this time. In a short while, the open suggestions and issues on this page begin to age without activity either accommodating, incorporating, or rejecting them. Soon the page shows up at the top of the docteam's monitor, letting all members see that part of the wiki is falling unmanaged. Hopefully someone will quickly be free to visit the page, promote the suggestion to a common problem, and tie all the issues to that for resolution.

Assumptions

Design

The wiki would become one cohesive entity, the core structure and essential pages of which are closed to editing only by the docteam, which will comprise the solid trunk of the offline documentation. Connected to this core structure are branching collections of pages for various topics and software packages, managed by many individual groups of proven responsible editors. These pages would also be considered official documentation and should only need cursory approval of updates for incorporation into the offline documentation. However, all online pages allow users to optionally view user submitted suggestions, add suggestions of their own, or critique existing suggestions. This allows editors to incorporate popular submitted content quickly and easily.

Furthermore, all users can create and control their own personal sections of the wiki, creating subpages that they can link to official documentation (and submit as howtos or resources for official adoption). This allows them to practice not only content editing, but also approving and incorporating the feedback of others.

Create a blueprint for the heirarchal structure, and implementation in moinmoin ACLs Create a blueprint for easily incorporating various types of user submitted content Create a blueprint for managing the obtrusiveness of user content Create a blueprint for user managed popularity and quality control Create a blueprint for overview, versioning, and translating tools Connect to blueprint for managing offline caching of help docs Connect to blueprint for linking to external resources

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Include:

• data migration, if any
• redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
• how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during CD testing, and to show off after release.

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Outstanding Issues

• - The only person pushing for this idea at this time is WAY over his head - While it all seems possible, the features would probably take time to develop - By its nature, this spec shoots for massive changes in the way the system works

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.

CategorySpec