-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hey Lubos, Thanks, hope we won't be losing steam during the journey, but at least we're off onto something! Support for openSUSE is indeed quite fragmented: - - r/openSUSE - - https://t.me/openSUSE_group bridged with the Freenode IRC and the Discord ("chat" channel) - - "support" channel on Discord bridged with the Freenode IRC - - mailing lists - - https://forums.opensuse.org - - all the non-English forums Now even though I don't see fragmentation as a problem in itself, there are two kinds of fragmentation that do hurt: 1) The Problem of Good Answers Take Luck When a question needs more than just descriptive material, and ought to be answered by something like a recommendation or a short deliberation where pros and cons have to be weighed against each other (i.e. should I install NVIDIA proprietary drivers or openSUSE NVIDIA package or just use Nouveau?); in this case, depending where you ask you will get different answers, not all equally good 2) The Problem of Good Answers Evaporate When a question has been met by a very good answer, which unfortunately is not conveniently discoverable by web search engines. And now to your remark: I don't think that r/openSUSE is an issue because in my experience -- perhaps other experiences will tell differently -- it avoids both Problems above, and I don't see another Problem it'd run into. For me the issue is more with the instant messaging services. I use them all the time and they are super good for coordination, but run into both issues full throttle. There is no magic cure I can think of right now. My only hope is that if we consolidate and update all documentation material *while also offering recommendations over and above mere descriptive material* we will be able to have a "source of truth" useful enough to knock down the two Problems, at least as far as new users are concerned. Just my opinion though. Cheers, Adrien Le mardi 13 octobre 2020 à 07:10 +0000, Lubos Kocman a écrit :

Thank you very much for your effort Adrien,

what I'd love to see is less question on reddit.com and more questions on *.opensuse.org hosted domains. Or perhaps we just need to better integrate with reddit :-)

On Mon, 2020-10-12 at 17:16 +0200, Adrien Glauser wrote:

...

Hello,

On behalf of our group of volunteers working with the doc team I wanted to share with you this annoucement.

Cheers,

Adrien

--- Join our team and help us improve the openSUSE learning experience ! ---

For years openSUSE has meant more than one distribution. With the recent addition of Kubic and MicroOS to the Leap & Tumbleweed family, different package sets, release models and workflows can be difficult to keep tabs on. openSUSE's ecosystem is in full blossom, but even jungles sometimes need a clearing.

This is why a group of volunteers has taken up the task of improving the learning experience for all users -- regardless of their experience and expertise. For new users, we want to make sure they can identify what best fits their needs, get the right tools and seamlessly take over from the post-installation screen. For experienced users, we want to provide them with detailed documentation that is easy to update, so that their experience and expertise can benefit others.

We believe that from engineers to end-users, everyone deserves to have confidence not only in their OS, but in the way they're using it. A chain of trust like this is made of a user-friendly documentation where technical details are balanced with evidence-based good practices.

It is with this goal in sight that we are calling the community for more volunteers. We are already set on course but the journey will be quicker -- and funnier -- with you. Any help is welcome, especially for:

- writing, editing and peer-reviewing: We would be delighted to benefit from more knowledgeable people to help us refresh, deepen and harmonize openSUSE's wikis and other documentation platforms

- video editing: Our video staff is looking for people interested in producing video contents and / or willing to script and record video tutorials in English

- testing: We need more people to help us test out already known work- flows and settings on new hardware, see if what used to be recommended still should be.

So now you can't say you didn't know. Do reach out and come with us shape the future of the openSUSE learning experience! You can find us on the following platforms:

- Telegram group: https://t.me/opensuse_docs

- IRC bridge: https://matrix.to/#/#docs:opensuse.org

- Discord bridge: https://disboard.org/fr/server/366985425371398146 then Contributing > docs

- mailing list: https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-doc/

Last but not least: this is part of a collective effort so we are happy to relay to you that get.opensuse.org -- the future entry-point to the openSUSE web platforms -- is also looking for volunteers. Their goal is to deploy by November and they are still looking for committers to the repo at https://github.com/opensuse/get-o-o as well as translators. Translation tasks can be picked up at http://l10n.opensuse.org. Everyone interested is welcome to get in touch with Stasiek Michalski for details.

Looking forward to meeting you! --

Best regards

Luboš Kocman

Release Manager openSUSE Leap

SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH Maxfeldstr. 5 90409 Nuremberg Germany

(HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Managing Director: Felix Imendörffer

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On 13/10/2020 14.59, Adrien Glauser wrote:

Hey Lubos,

Thanks, hope we won't be losing steam during the journey, but at least we're off onto something!

Support for openSUSE is indeed quite fragmented: - r/openSUSE

Er... what is the meaning of the 'r/' above? I'm sorry, but I'm lost as to what may it mean. I suppose it is obvious to others, but to me it is new.

- https://t.me/openSUSE_group bridged with the Freenode IRC and the Discord ("chat" channel)

No idea what t.me is, either. :-?

- "support" channel on Discord bridged with the Freenode IRC - mailing lists - https://forums.opensuse.org - all the non-English forums

Now even though I don't see fragmentation as a problem in itself, there are two kinds of fragmentation that do hurt:

1) The Problem of Good Answers Take Luck When a question needs more than just descriptive material, and ought to be answered by something like a recommendation or a short deliberation where pros and cons have to be weighed against each other (i.e. should I install NVIDIA proprietary drivers or openSUSE NVIDIA package or just use Nouveau?); in this case, depending where you ask you will get different answers, not all equally good

2) The Problem of Good Answers Evaporate When a question has been met by a very good answer, which unfortunately is not conveniently discoverable by web search engines.

Heh.

And now to your remark: I don't think that r/openSUSE is an issue because in my experience -- perhaps other experiences will tell differently -- it avoids both Problems above, and I don't see another Problem it'd run into.

For me the issue is more with the instant messaging services. I use them all the time and they are super good for coordination, but run into both issues full throttle. There is no magic cure I can think of right now.

My only hope is that if we consolidate and update all documentation material *while also offering recommendations over and above mere descriptive material* we will be able to have a "source of truth" useful enough to knock down the two Problems, at least as far as new users are concerned.

Just my opinion though.

Cheers,

Adrien

Ok :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)

Am October 13, 2020 12:59:03 PM UTC schrieb Adrien Glauser :

My only hope is that if we consolidate and update all documentation material *while also offering recommendations over and above mere descriptive material* we will be able to have a "source of truth" useful enough to knock down the two Problems, at least as far as new users are concerned.

Please excuse me jumping in here, but maybe it's helpful information for you or others that I started: https://moodle.opensuse.org/ a few weeks ago. This is not about documentation, but a learn management system, that could - theoretic ally - help users to learn to understand the details of some Linux or open source parts by reading documentation or presentations, discussing in topic centric forums/ chats or even prove their knowledge in tests - around specific topics. So far, the login with your IDP account should already work. What is obviously missing there is content and trainers/ teachers, that want to provide course material and teach people.

...

...

Any help is welcome, especially for:

- writing, editing and peer-reviewing: We would be delighted to benefit from more knowledgeable people to help us refresh, deepen and harmonize openSUSE's wikis and other documentation platforms

- video editing: Our video staff is looking for people interested in producing video contents and / or willing to script and record video tutorials in English

JFYI: moodle would allow to summarize/ combine tutorial videos, docs, dedicated wikis and other stuff under one umbrella. One .opensuse.org umbrella with full control for interested community members. Regards, Lars -- Lars Vogdt - BuildOPS Engineering Team Lead - SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH (HRB 247165, AG München), GF: Felix Imendörffer

Hi Adrien Am October 14, 2020 9:43:47 AM UTC schrieb Adrien Glauser :

Moodle surely taps into my memories of college! :-P I think it has a place in an educational setting but my worry is that it might feel a bit too formal to the end user while lacking the flexibility we want to be able to make the most of both visual and textual contents.

I agree - especially for your purpose. But as your Email $ubject mentioned "learning", I thought it might be a good idea to bring Moodle into the game.

So yeah, we need: - something full-text searchable - with good discoverability features - easy to update - pleasant to browse and visually enticing.

Maybe we should think about a generic search engine? The heroes meanwhile have control over all tools, that you need for this purpose. That means especially that they have access to the data(bases) with the content in it. I think it might be a cool (SoC?) project to provide a search engine that covers: * forums * wikis * docs * mailing lists * matrix (and the bridged chats) * ... (and other tools I forgot) That does definitively not mean that I want to stop you with your project. I just think we could try to work on multiple areas, keeping an overall picture in mind. All our tools provide specific solutions for our community. All have their meaning and a right to stay. But if we want to help our community to get good answers for their specific question, I think relying on Google alone is not the best idea. With kind regards, Lars

Am 2020-10-14 15:11, schrieb Adrien Glauser:

My beef with it is that it kinda assumes that we want to accept the status quo with the current level fragmentation in support material, while this "refreshing the learning experience" is about challenging the status quo. To be clear, we are talking about two strategies:

(Repair) Bite the bullet about fragmentation, make or customize a search engine able to fight fragmentation after the facts, so that support material is dynamically aggregated.

(Protect) Refuse to bite the bullet, prevent fragmentation in the first place by collecting information into a static (yet easy to maintain) single "source of truth & best practices", and then hope it irrigates all platforms.

I have to admit that I really like your enthusiasm and wish your project all the best! I just fear that "Repair" is the only realistic option, especially long term. Why? We are an open source project with a lot of individuals trying to work on their areas of interest. Often enough these areas produce very interesting and useful stuff, but the results could - at least in the beginning - not be integrated under your "protect" umbrella (mostly because of resource or time restrictions). You can decide to loose some of these projects because of your restrictions, but I'm not sure if this is a good idea. We are diverse. Everyone has different opinions and different favorite tools. Trying to press everyone into the same tooling will not help to get more volunteers. I even tend to say that people who provided content in "their" tool in the past will neither spent their current time to migrate their content nor will they update their parts in the new setup later. I have seen this in the past with the "wiki migration". A lot of people stopped their voluntary contributions once others decided that they *have to move* and refresh their provided content in the new wiki pages. Since than, for me, it's clear that forcing volunteers to re-do their former work is a way to push good contributors out of the system. And as I said before: so far I see the reason behind each tool that we (as openSUSE community) provide to our "customers". What I miss on the other side is kind of a portal (page) that helps people to identify these tools and ways to collaborate and contribute. And I miss - like you - volunteers that review the existing content.

About your other point about the tools that the openSUSE platforms provide, is there an up-to-date list of every single tool hosted by openSUSE? Yes I am being lazy, but better being lazy than risking overlooking things.

For projects hosted and maintained in the openSUSE universe (this includes infrastructure provided by the heroes as well as SUSE powered stuff) I suggest to look at: https://status.opensuse.org/ ...and if you click on the icon in the upper right corner of that page, you should get a cool overview of all currently known openSUSE related stuff. With kind regards, Lars

On Wed, 2020-10-14 at 23:35 +0200, Adrien Glauser wrote:

Hey again Lars,

Yes, we are not foolish, Repair and Protect should absolutely work together. For us it's definitely Protect now and Repair later. Of course we are living in a world of entropy: docs decays, code rots, volunteers marry and grow a belly. We have to live with that and the best we can do is promote *knowledge transfer* to fight the entropy, throughout all scales of proficiency between engineers and absolute newcomers.

Be assured that we don't want to find the one-size-fit-them-all kind of solution. I think we are going to be very empirical about this -- start from most common and painful issues and give visibility to the most simple combination of technical details and best practices for preventing or fixing them.

Anyway, all this is just words until we have something concrete to show you, so I better go back to work.

Have a pleasant end of the week,

Adrien

I have to agree with Lars on this topic. "Protect" sounds to me like the team wants to artifically limit me (as a contributor) on which platforms I can use to engage with other openSUSE contributors and define exactly where I must go if I wish to provide information to openSUSE users. I assure you, if that is the case, then I will cease contributing to any "official" openSUSE documentation platform and only provide information via platforms of my own control. Like Lars says, we're a diverse bunch, and respecting that diversity is a key value of the openSUSE's guiding principles. I do hope I have misunderstood what you mean by "Protect", but if I have not, then I hope I make it very clear where I stand on the matter.

Le mercredi 14 octobre 2020 à 16:22 +0200, Lars Vogdt a écrit :

...

Am 2020-10-14 15:11, schrieb Adrien Glauser:

...

My beef with it is that it kinda assumes that we want to accept the status quo with the current level fragmentation in support material, while this "refreshing the learning experience" is about challenging the status quo. To be clear, we are talking about two strategies:

(Repair) Bite the bullet about fragmentation, make or customize a search engine able to fight fragmentation after the facts, so that support material is dynamically aggregated.

(Protect) Refuse to bite the bullet, prevent fragmentation in the first place by collecting information into a static (yet easy to maintain) single "source of truth & best practices", and then hope it irrigates all platforms.

I have to admit that I really like your enthusiasm and wish your project all the best!

I just fear that "Repair" is the only realistic option, especially long term.

Why? We are an open source project with a lot of individuals trying to work on their areas of interest. Often enough these areas produce very interesting and useful stuff, but the results could - at least in the beginning - not be integrated under your "protect" umbrella (mostly because of resource or time restrictions). You can decide to loose some of these projects because of your restrictions, but I'm not sure if this is a good idea.

We are diverse. Everyone has different opinions and different favorite tools. Trying to press everyone into the same tooling will not help to get more volunteers. I even tend to say that people who provided content in "their" tool in the past will neither spent their current time to migrate their content nor will they update their parts in the new setup later.

I have seen this in the past with the "wiki migration". A lot of people stopped their voluntary contributions once others decided that they *have to move* and refresh their provided content in the new wiki pages. Since than, for me, it's clear that forcing volunteers to re-do their former work is a way to push good contributors out of the system.

And as I said before: so far I see the reason behind each tool that we (as openSUSE community) provide to our "customers". What I miss on the other side is kind of a portal (page) that helps people to identify these tools and ways to collaborate and contribute. And I miss - like you - volunteers that review the existing content.

...

About your other point about the tools that the openSUSE platforms provide, is there an up-to-date list of every single tool hosted by openSUSE? Yes I am being lazy, but better being lazy than risking overlooking things.

For projects hosted and maintained in the openSUSE universe (this includes infrastructure provided by the heroes as well as SUSE powered stuff) I suggest to look at:

https://status.opensuse.org/

...and if you click on the icon in the upper right corner of that page, you should get a cool overview of all currently known openSUSE related stuff.

With kind regards, Lars

-- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Phone +4991174053-361 SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer

Have to fully agree with Adrien, but just to clarify our intentions: We wish to sort the wiki in a way that is easier to find information on given matters for users who are struggling with a problem or just generally wish to find information on a topic or on openSUSE. This project is not about excluding other platforms where contribution is currently happening. This project is not about gatekeeping. This project is not about control or setting limitations on contributors. This project is not about "questioning openSUSE's guiding principles". This project is purely about knowledge sharing and encouraging new users to openSUSE to learn, find out more about openSUSE and maybe later down the road contribute to the project in some form if they feel like it.

So if you read 3 minutes into the backlog you'll see that "Protect" in the context has nothing to do with dogma or exclusion or control, but on the contrary was about propagating up-to-date information and empirically tested good practices.

We've already established with Adrien a point in our list which calls for "Collectors" who are collecting issues and materials from all the places where discussions happening what we can work with. This assumes that we can map these places successfully. So if you're a contributor who is documenting on X platform that's fine. Nobody will force you into doing anything that you don't want to or using a platform or format you don't feel comfortable with. Drop a link to your documentation(s) so we can include it in form of a link at least. Life goes on, business as usual. Furthermore, what we settled on during our first meeting with Lana and Frank is to turn doc.opensuse.org into a hub from where the current documentations will be accessible in their current format and will link to certain topics - like FAQ - on en.opensuse.org. We're more than happy to hear other suggestions, however, considering that the Welcome app is pointing to doc.opensuse.org seems like a reasonable decision. The goal is simple: lower the barrier of entry, make documentations easier to find by making them available on en.opensuse.org in collaboration with the maintainers/contributors. A. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Friday, October 16, 2020 7:06 AM, Adrien Glauser wrote: > > I have to agree with Lars on this topic. > > "Protect" sounds to me like > > And that's where the discussion went bankrupt, where the topic was > shifted to how someone felt about a word when instead there was a > precise definition of what the word meant, and a concrete context > against which that definition was illustrated. Perhaps I am the one to > fault for this as I've been quite long winded on this topic. > > So if you read 3 minutes into the backlog you'll see that "Protect" in > the context has nothing to do with dogma or exclusion or control, but > on the contrary was about propagating up-to-date information and > empirically tested good practices. > > Anyway, I have little interest in building a theory of learning in the > FOSS environment, let alone defending it on this ML. Just wanted to > keep people in the loop. I will continue to do so, but at the end of > the day, only concrete results matter. Anyone here will have plenty of > time to make constructive criticisms of every aspect and detail of the > results, and I have no reason to doubt that we will try our best to > honour them. > > See ya later > > the team wants to artifically limit me (as > > > a contributor) on which platforms I can use to engage with other > > openSUSE contributors and define exactly where I must go if I wish to > > provide information to openSUSE users. > > I assure you, if that is the case, then I will cease contributing to > > any "official" openSUSE documentation platform and only provide > > information via platforms of my own control. > > Like Lars says, we're a diverse bunch, and respecting that diversity is > > a key value of the openSUSE's guiding principles. > > I do hope I have misunderstood what you mean by "Protect", but if I > > have not, then I hope I make it very clear where I stand on the matter. > > > > > Le mercredi 14 octobre 2020 à 16:22 +0200, Lars Vogdt a écrit : > > > > > > > Am 2020-10-14 15:11, schrieb Adrien Glauser: > > > > > > > > > My beef with it is that it kinda assumes that we want to > > > > > accept the status quo with the current level fragmentation in > > > > > support > > > > > material, while this "refreshing the learning experience" is > > > > > about > > > > > challenging the status quo. To be clear, we are talking about two > > > > > strategies: > > > > > (Repair) Bite the bullet about fragmentation, make or customize a > > > > > search engine able to fight fragmentation after the facts, so > > > > > that > > > > > support material is dynamically aggregated. > > > > > (Protect) Refuse to bite the bullet, prevent fragmentation in the > > > > > first > > > > > place by collecting information into a static (yet easy to > > > > > maintain) > > > > > single "source of truth & best practices", and then hope it > > > > > irrigates > > > > > all platforms. > > > > > > > > I have to admit that I really like your enthusiasm and wish your > > > > project > > > > all the best! > > > > I just fear that "Repair" is the only realistic option, especially > > > > long > > > > term. > > > > Why? We are an open source project with a lot of individuals trying > > > > to > > > > work on their areas of interest. Often enough these areas produce > > > > very > > > > interesting and useful stuff, but the results could - at least in > > > > the > > > > beginning - not be integrated under your "protect" umbrella > > > > (mostly > > > > because of resource or time restrictions). You can decide to loose > > > > some > > > > of these projects because of your restrictions, but I'm not sure if > > > > this > > > > is a good idea. > > > > We are diverse. Everyone has different opinions and different > > > > favorite > > > > tools. Trying to press everyone into the same tooling will not help > > > > to > > > > get more volunteers. I even tend to say that people who provided > > > > content in "their" tool in the past will neither spent their > > > > current > > > > time to migrate their content nor will they update their parts in > > > > the > > > > new setup later. > > > > I have seen this in the past with the "wiki migration". A lot of > > > > people > > > > stopped their voluntary contributions once others decided that > > > > they > > > > have to move and refresh their provided content in the new wiki > > > > pages. > > > > Since than, for me, it's clear that forcing volunteers to re-do > > > > their > > > > former work is a way to push good contributors out of the system. > > > > And as I said before: so far I see the reason behind each tool that > > > > we > > > > (as openSUSE community) provide to our "customers". What I miss on > > > > the > > > > other side is kind of a portal (page) that helps people to > > > > identify > > > > these tools and ways to collaborate and contribute. And I miss - > > > > like > > > > you - volunteers that review the existing content. > > > > > > > > > About your other point about the tools that the openSUSE > > > > > platforms > > > > > provide, is there an up-to-date list of every single tool hosted > > > > > by > > > > > openSUSE? Yes I am being lazy, but better being lazy than risking > > > > > overlooking things. > > > > > > > > For projects hosted and maintained in the openSUSE universe (this > > > > includes infrastructure provided by the heroes as well as SUSE > > > > powered > > > > stuff) I suggest to look at: > > > > https://status.opensuse.org/ > > > > ...and if you click on the icon in the upper right corner of that > > > > page, > > > > you should get a cool overview of all currently known openSUSE > > > > related > > > > stuff. > > > > With kind regards, > > > > Lars > > > > -- > > Richard Brown > > Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team > > Phone +4991174053-361 > > SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 > > Nuernberg > > (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) > > Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-doc+unsubscribe@opensuse.org > To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-doc+owner@opensuse.org