ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

*"You're quite right that there is no concept of "official" in the
Ubuntu community and that the word is relatively meaningless. But you
do bandy the word around quite a bit in your wiki pages"*

Find one place (apart from where I mention the "Official Ubuntu Book") where
the word "official" appears on our wiki.

Thanks for the feedback. I know it may seem like we are trying to do the
same thing as you, but in all reality we aren't.

Also, regarding the open team and bzr branch - we have a lot of editing and
approval systems in place that prevent literally "anyone" saying "anything"
in the final release.

*"But I do think that if you take on board what we are saying based on our
experience, it will benefit everyone."*
*
*
*I do. Just because I counter-argue what you are saying doesn't mean I'm not
listening :)
*
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Matthew East <mdke@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 2:33 AM, Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > If you don't believe that this project will be successful, then
> > unfortunately that is your problem - I wrote a very nice email to the
> docs
> > team expressing interest to collaborate and offered you basically
> unlimited
> > use of our resources and material, but the reply I get still doubts our
> > project - fair enough, if that's how you feel then you'll have to wait
> and
> > see.
>
> It's not that we're "not interested" in your project (to use your
> words from another email). The way I would put it, at least from my
> perspective, is that we recognise your enthusiasm and would like to
> find a way to channel that in the most effective way to achieve your
> objectives and ours. Don't forget that we have been around for quite
> some years and have quite a lot of experience with documentation
> projects. It's easy to simply talk about collaboration in an offhand
> way, and of course projects with identical free licenses are always
> able to help themselves to material created by other projects (you're
> welcome to do it with our material and vice versa, provided that the
> license is respected) it's a lot more difficult to actually sit down
> and think about whether the projects have really got different aims or
> not. Because what you've done is start a project that is creating
> material from scratch using a different type of text markup in
> circumstances where the Ubuntu system documentation is aimed at the
> same audience and covers the same subjects. And while I do appreciate
> your effort to get in touch with the team, because that's more than
> others have done in the past, it's not *real* collaboration.
>
> You're quite right that there is no concept of "official" in the
> Ubuntu community and that the word is relatively meaningless. But you
> do bandy the word around quite a bit in your wiki pages and you do
> aspire to include the material on the Ubuntu system. If that's a
> genuine aspiration, I really think you do need to engage with the
> points that have been made. In particular, Phil has already expressed
> concern about including a set of material with Ubuntu systems that
> overlaps so heavily with the system documentation provided. I share
> that concern. Another concern is that the system documentation has a
> careful process of quality control, whereas the ubuntu-manual bzr
> branch can be written to by any member of the ubuntu-manual team,
> which is an open team with 130 members. A very open system obviously
> has advantages (like our wiki) but in my opinion it's not suited to
> inclusion of material on every Ubuntu system.
>
> There have been plenty of "unofficial" documentation projects in the
> past. ubuntuguide.org is one of the more prominent ones. Others are
> listed here:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/IndependentDocEfforts,
> along with the reasons why we try to discourage them if we can. In the
> end we can't stop independent documentation efforts, and all we can do
> is to encourage them to contribute directly to the Ubuntu
> Documentation Team and try and take on board criticisms that are made
> of what we do.
>
> So you're quite right that no one can stop your project, and no one
> here is suggesting that. But I do think that if you take on board what
> we are saying based on our experience, it will benefit everyone.
>
> --
> Matthew East
> http://www.mdke.org
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
>



-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz
www.benjaminhumphreyphotography.com