Is the wiki useful, what content is missing?

We do. Is in the makings, but you didn’t like me mentioning how we do it and when …

Oh, but i don’t think you are a poppy to get frozen at the smallest drop of temperature in discussion … you still have the energy to argue about something that happened an hour ago :slight_smile:

Everybody can do that, but that doesn’t solve the issue. If someone relies solely to: Manjaro should do this and that then is not much help for anyone in the team.

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Do you realize that your intervention in this thread prevented people from giving their advice. Your first message was clear and with authority, then you closed it, then re-open…

That is exactly what i did not do. I asked people their opinion first to be sure i was not alone to think what i think.

Indeed, i am a little shivering bird, nobody’s perfect :bird:

If people are scared by a comment made by me, then what you propose - an echo chamber just for yourself?
You did shared your observations and some complains, so did the followup comments.

I’m a person, and as a forum member i got opinions too.
One proper way to deal with this is

  • point the issue
  • come up with the solution

Same as you deal with a topic for someone that asks for help.
Is not working, looks bad, is incomplete, it fails, is lacking features … - are all ok remarks, nobody argues with that as a critique, but if the next step is not there, then is just talking…

Reply, is bad. Keep it silent, is bad.

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This thread is going to nowhere, therefore it better ends here.

I totally agree with this statement, However there is no need to replicate ARCH documentation.

I do agree that USER documentation needs improvement, Manjaro always has been a user driven distro and a such because the team is very small its up to the users to volunteer to write documentation, me personalty if I was to write documentation I would start by developer docs as that is even more needed from my point of view.

The issue with porting tutorials from the forum to the wiki is we need author permission, that’s makes it hard and is actually easier if the author signs in the wiki and writes there instead of the forum.

I am reopening this post in the hope that everyone gets back on topic and maybe wants to volunteer for this task or for some small bits of this huge task.

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Nice answer, thanks.

As a former developer (not anymore since a very long time), i would say that both are important. But as a team member, i understand your point of view. Mine is a little bit different though.

Could we dedicate a section on the forum for Howtos, where you could pin a warning as first thread saying it is clearly stated that by posting in this section, you agree that your post or part of it will be reported in the wiki if useful ?
It could also be stated when users create an account here to become a member of the forum.

This kind of Howtos section already exists in “Contribution” so, it should be possible.

Sure we could post that, but it will still take someone time to move it over the wiki and quote the author to a forum name that could disappear in the future, because the user has anonymized his account or left etc.

Well, in my opinion, no need to quote him/her.
In my case, if one day i write a Howto i do not care to see my name in the Wiki. More than that, i don’t want to see my name.

How i see it is :

  1. A user writes a Howto on, for instance, btrfs or something else.
  2. This Howto is read by a team member who estimates it should be added to the wiki
  3. This Howto should be tested by several team members and/or by members (not necessarily team member)
  4. Tests have to be done on several kernels, or several DE (if applicable) etc…you get the idea, to ensure this howto/tutorial works properly.
  5. This Howto can be modified by the testers, if necessary, to make it better, more complete.
  6. Then, it’s published on the wiki when everybody is agree.

But, i would say this is not enough, for this kind of Wiki/Knowledge base/Tutorials, we also need to defines rules :

  1. Font used
  2. Format and size of the pictures/screenshots
  3. The level of difficulty should, in my opinion, be specified as it’s already done in the contribution section
  4. Grammar and syntax must also be checked
  5. etc…maybe an UX guy could help us to make the information appealing and easy to read

This is just some thoughts. I know you are a small team, and a lot is already done. I even hesitated to create this thread for that reason.

I think there is not need to have hundreds of howtos, as you said it, no need to replicate what already exist on Arch wiki.

wiki is best for search ? :upside_down_face:
for me, exists too much forum “howto” on all subjects so impossible to classify in a wiki.


And a lot of howto’s are (good) personal recipes : if in wiki, users might believe that this is the official way “to do”


EDIT
And for me the “how to” are better in forum: we have in addition comments and links to topics concerning the functionality (not possible in wiki)
yes, we can include some in existing pages of the wiki (the wiki is open to all)

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I agree that some how to’s do not fit in the wiki, It has to be things specific to manjaro that are not affected by upstream changes, like Pamac is ok, but display drivers is not as documentation can change with a simple update.

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Howto / Tutorial / Walkthrough / Procedures …this is not really my point, it can be on whatever we want provided it’s useful.
Of course, what is specific on Manjaro is useful, but there is more than than.

A good start point could be to check what are the most frequent en recurrent questions and difficulties for users here.

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Yes and this is a good point.

For an experimented user, hey, he knows that there are always several ways to do one thing, so that’s ok.
For a non-experimented user, it gives him, at least, a method tested by members which works on the distribution he’s installed.

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the few pages i have been using on the Manjaro wiki has been useful, but only like 2-3 of them, i mostly find more answers in the Arch Wiki or older forum posts

Probably not relevant but I find most helpful posts when trouble shooting on the archived forum

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The forum and the wiki are 2 ways to help people

  • In the wiki i can´t ask questions if i don’t understand something.
  • In the forum i may not get an extended explanation, and i can do no additional reading on a subject

What i am missing is the good interaction between the forum and the wiki. At the moment it seems to me like 2 worlds not coming together.

The forum should work much more actively with the wiki. How can you advertise that?
Forum users should be rewarded for using the wiki. Just like they are rewarded when they keep coming back or when they write posts …
For example, a link to the wiki often helps when answering questions.

maybe it would be possible to allow such links even with lower user-Level, or

From a certain level on, the suggestion should come to take a look at the wiki. Sign up there and help maintain the wiki.

In the introduction to the area with the [HowTo]'s you could explicitly refer to the wiki. You could recommend writing a howto first (if the topic is not already in the wiki). If the topic is suitable for the wiki, the user can then enter it there himself into the wiki. At this point, a link to the login page would surely work fine. Also a link to the rules for contributions in the wiki. So he doesn’t have to look for these pages in the wiki himself.

And maybe a page like this one would be helpfull for the wiki. (You even may try to talk @Fabby into this) :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

image

In the introduction to the area with the languages you could explicitly refer to the wiki. An you could suggest that the user may look into the wiki in his language. Maybe he can contribute in translating. There may be the need also for a landig-page for translators.

I think a lot of people would help with the wiki, when nicely asked :sunglasses:

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This would be indeed a good way of doing it, however this is also time consuming, and it’s up to a individual or group of individuals to want to do this task, being on the team or not and volunteering.

Me personally as I mentioned before I will not take on this task, maybe someone else will, anyway this can stiil stay open and be discussed, we will see if is viable to be done in the future or not.

This also needs a plan, what content is missing in the wiki and what should be added.

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I would like to suggest:
If YOU see a post in this forum that includes material worth to be placed in the wiki:

  • Ask the contributor if he is OK with copying this to the wiki
  • If you are able, mark the title with the tag “wiki”
  • If you are able, copy (part of) the content into the wiki

If you are not able to do this yourself, write a PN to someone who is able to. This way the wiki will grow faster. And good content will not get lost.

Andreas85

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