8

I recently saw Stack Overflow had launched Documentation. Are we going to have any? We should. I like the idea very much.

7
  • 3
    I kind of consider the site documentation as it is. We're not exactly like Stack Overflow where you can't really fit documentation into Q/A format.. But this is an interesting idea!
    – Seth Mod
    Commented Jul 23, 2016 at 4:14
  • 1
    Meanwhile the Ubuntu tag on the SO Documentation site definitely needs more work.
    – edwinksl
    Commented Jul 23, 2016 at 4:17
  • 3
    @edwinksl yeah, all those questions waiting for close votes.
    – Braiam
    Commented Jul 23, 2016 at 18:38
  • What type of documentation are you suggesting? this type? help.ubuntu.com or this type? askubuntu.com/help or something else entirely?
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 17:30
  • @ElderGeek like askubuntu.com/documentation - something new. Somewhat like stackoverflow.com/documentation
    – fosslinux
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 20:19
  • So you mean documentation about Ubuntu then? It's clear that the format is new. My question was more along the lines of "Pertaining to what?" The OS, this site or something else entirely? Please clarify what information you think should be covered in this new format
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 8:39
  • @ElderGeek The OS. Somewhat like a much better version of the Ubuntu tag at Documentation.SO
    – fosslinux
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 20:14

2 Answers 2

11

I take a dissenting view to the previously accepted answer. Just because documentation exists somewhere else doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to use SE's documentation feature.

In order to do documentation "officially" I need to either:

  1. Learn MoinMoin, and then people who aren't trusted are locked down on the wiki anyway, so even if you wanted to contributing is difficult. And even if I wanted to the wiki is too slow to use.
  2. Write and read manpages.
  3. "slowly learn to work with Mallard/DocBook, Bazaar and Launchpad."

All three of those options are terrible, I would prefer to just use SE's documentation feature so it's fun and easy to use and has some semblance of structure, and we'd be able to take large swaths of existing content which has outgrown QA and curate it into something more useful.

2
  • I agree with you more :D
    – fosslinux
    Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 0:45
  • I forgot about how horrible the wiki / MoinMoin is. You have a good point there. Commented Aug 5, 2016 at 17:37
5

From a logical standpoint I would have to say that this sounds somewhat like reinventing the wheel. There is already a documentation project in existence why not expend effort to improve an existing structure rather than creating a new project? After all, providing another place to look for documentation is likely to be confusing. As it is Ubuntu users can obtain documentation via The aforementioned link and man pages. (By no means an exhaustive list). I don't see how forking the effort to document Ubuntu will improve on the current situation.

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