On Sun, 13 Apr 2014 17:27:28 +0200, Caig wrote:
I think, perhaps, what we need to do is put together some sort of "new user survey" to find out the sorts of things new users find they need to know or would like to learn about.
I really like the idea: focus on the users (and potentially new contributors, the future of the project)
Well, ideally most of the documentation that's on the website should be targeted at new users, I think. The focus for new contributors is somewhat different, depending on the nature of the contribution they want to make.
+1 writing/updating pages (even a single one a single time) and keeping all the wiki structured (or grouped if structured sounds heavy/too limiting) are two different tasks. Even to avoid duplication of effort like these for example - http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:LAMP_setup and http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Linux_Apache_MySQL_PHP - http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Apper and http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Apper_troubleshooting or poor orphans barely discoverable http://en.opensuse.org/Special:LonelyPages
Exactly - that's why structure is needed - you end up with duplication, and with duplication, you have the serious potential for multiple conflicting ways to handle things. While there may be multiple ways to do things, for new users particularly, the simplest way to get things going is with the simplest procedure. Understanding the interdependencies between different parts of a knowledge domain is also important in order to build a flow. Even if a user starts with implementing LAMP, they might need some prerequisite knowledge on Apache, MySQL, or PHP. If there aren't references like that, then users end up frustrated because they'll read an instruction and say "but I don't know how to do that - where do I go look?" and they can't find it. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org