[kde-doc-english] Documentation feedback

[Lauri Watts]

On Saturday 22 January 2005 18.13, Full Decent wrote:
> Forgive me if this is the wrong destination for this proposal...
>
> I am proposing the idea that all documentation for KDE projects and on
> all KDE websites include links to provide online feedback on that
> documentation.
>
> At a minimum, it will very useful to see at the bottom of each page:
>
> -- Was this information helpful?
> --   Yes
> --   No
>
> Many other sites do this now... but we should also do the following if
> the user clicks on No:
>
> -- Please tell us what was wrong with the documentation:
> --   It was not thorough
> --   It did not apply to me
> --   It is outdated
> --   It was inaccurate

Adding something like this to pages is trivial, to either docs.kde.org or the 
docs in khelpcenter.  However, are you volunteering to triage this 
information, and file bugs for the valid problems?  

If you are volunteering for such a thing, why don't you just start reading 
through documentation, comparing it against the applications, and filing bugs 
directly - saving the need to clutter up of every page of documentation?  See 
the good work Virgil has been doing in this regard - this is very useful to 
us, and immediately productive. 

> Internet conectivity, what if they don't have it?
> When the user clicks on yes or no, or subsequenly "It was not
> thorough", etc, there should be a background process that "queues up"
> these responses. This daemon will save the response data to a file.
> The next time there is internet connectivity, it should use curl or
> something and request URL's like:
>
> http://www.kde.org/documentation/feedback.php?document=0103983&response=4
>

We have an issue tracking system already: bugs.kde.org, product docs, and 
could easily provide a link to start the bug wizard with the starting 
information filled in.  bugs.kde.org requires an account be opened though, 
and for good reason. 

> Do you think this method provide valuable feedback for the
> documentation project? Do you think this would be technically feasible
> to implement?

No, I really don't, at least in the form you outline.  A daemon to deal with 
docs feedback is really overengineering things, when a simple prefilled with 
information email link or bug report is fine.

It would be technically feasible, but unless we have more hands on people 
doing the work, it would simply overwhelm us with unfiltered data to sort.  
Someone getting personally involved and filing specific bugs with issues to 
be corrected, and/or providing patches to fix these issues, is much more 
useful.

The problem is really not lack of feedback - it's simply lack of people 
writing.  

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org