Using wiki to encourage users to contribute to documentation.
Hi,
I recently attended
a Linux user conference in Birmingham UK, where I met Martin
Michlmayr and he encouraged me to describe my idea for wiki generated
documentation.
Although I have been
in the computer industry for a long time, I am fairly new to open source and
Linux.
I am definitely a
convert to the principles and methods of Debian so I am on your side. Please do
not interpret the contribution as hostile. I genuinely want to help improve the
quality of Debian's documentation.
My main interest is
the documentation for the new user as that is the category I fit into as far as
Linux is concerned. As a new, interested user I have browsed quite a lot of
Debian and Linux documentation and most of it is quite difficult to read and
understand for the new user. When I looked at the possibility of contributing to
the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) it looked quite intimidating so I shied
off.
Just recently I read
an article describing Wiki and this really fired my imagination and enthusiasm
because so many times I have read documentation that was incorrect and if only I
could have changed it there and then I would have. It struck me that here was a
way to generate documentation that both users and engineers could contribute to
in a very open and easy way. The whole point about a Wiki is that you can
contribute immediately. You don't need permission and you don't have to wait
while you get authorised, rubber stamped, sanitised and what ever other hoops
might be provided to jump through.
I agree that a Wiki
could very easily get out of control if not supervised, but moderated
sensitively it could produce some excellent results.Not only could a Wiki
environment be used to document existing versions of the system, it could be
used by users to define how they would like the next version to behave.
I appreciate that
there is a lot more to documentation for a project as large as Debian, but here
I am concerned with generating the content rather than getting bogged down with
how it get translated, stored, distributed etc.
I also appreciate
that the choice of wiki engine is critical to give the right control and the
ability to convert the content to the desired mark-up language for easy
processing to other document types.
I would be
interested to hear your comments, objections or encouragement in such a scheme.
I would be prepared to host a web site for this purpose and to moderate it with
the help of your good selves.
Kind
regards,
Andrew Ballantine
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