[CentOS-docs] Merging Documentation and Help pages

Wed Jan 7 16:07:22 UTC 2009
Karanbir Singh <kbsingh at centos.org>

Dag Wieers wrote:
> That was the main motivation to have a single entry-point for people 
> looking for information. Whether it is something that is solved by 
> documentation or not.

All of what you said here makes sense, but then surely its the other way 
the merge should take place - people who want help are more likely to 
look at a 'Getting Help' page rather than a Documentation page - And we 
should then change the tab's and url's to point at that page. Perhaps 
Documentation can be a part of that page itself.

One thing that we dont highlight enough is that its often a good idea to 
talk to the local LUG or peer's who might already be using Linux. In 
other cases, its a good idea to talk to the people who sold you a 
specific solution as well.

None of this has anything to do with Documentation or Manuals.

On the flip side the docs page could be expanded quite a bit as well to 
have deeper links into things like the  deployment guide / 
virtualisation guide etc so people know whats on the other end. Eg. look 
at the present Documentation page, think of someone who has not used 
CentOS before - what would be the most apt url to click if you want to 
find out howto install the distro. I stared at the page for a few 
minutes and failed, so took the first option listed there which is to 
search the wiki. Searching for 'install' on the wiki has interesting 
results. none of which are really relevant :D [1]

Once we can get a resonable Documentation page in place, we could then 
divert www.centos.org/docs/ page to the wiki page. ( but leave the 
manuals where they are )

Btw, that 'Learn' url on the wiki.centos.org could be  changed to 
something that is more relevant. Getting Help might be a good option for 
that as well. At the moment, its 'Learn' pointing to a page called 
'Documentation' that is really a Getting Help page.

[1] I wonder if its possible to get rid of all those extra Moin pages 
that seem to come up with every search :/

-- 
Karanbir Singh
CentOS Project { http://www.centos.org/ }
irc: z00dax, #centos at irc.freenode.net