[kde-doc-english] [Bug 136146] wish -wiki like khelp system

[Jason Locklin]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136146         




------- Additional Comments From locklin.jason gmail com  2006-10-29 23:09 -------
Wow, that was more of a response than I expected,

I understand the concerns put forward here, and maybe there's a good compromise:

First, the help pages are brief and concise, so they should be the first place users go.  It would make sense to have, at the bottom of each page in the help system a "For more information from the KDE wiki, click here" and the specific wiki page would load.  This would keep in status-quo the reliable help pages, but give users more content when the help page didn't answer all of the users questions.  It would also alow developers to keep the help pages short and concise, as the user always has the option to read more on the wiki.

To respond to those who say the current kde wiki is lacking content: have you seen it?  the change to mediawiki should make contributing a lot less daunting. In it's current form,it is hardly usable.

The second compromose might be to simply make contributing to the KDE help as simple as a wiki.  Say, for instance,  You have a "Edit" button, which allows the user to make changes to the page.  When the user clicked "Done," a patch file would be sent to the documentation team.  Those involved could apply the "patches" as they see fit.

Obviously, this would involve more thought, but such a system, if implemented well, could allow anyone to easily contribute without much work, and would give the documentation people more content to work with.

While I'm not a software developer, I'm just the type of person who would contribute if it was as easy as a wiki.  I don't see why you should have to understand cvs and how the "KDE help center" works to contribute some documentation.  I suppose I could e-mail the KDE docs team, but I spend enough time playing email-tag.  

Some would say that the linux kernel develeped so well because it had many, many people looking at the code and making fixes and changes here and there.  Making a more open documentation system could result in a similar result.