ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Mehmet Atif Ergun <mehmetaergun@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Hannie,

Nice to hear from you. Please find my answers below,

> Is the manual useful to Ubuntu users?
> Below you find statistics on the number of printed purchases and downloads
> of our manual.
>

The German print edition for 13.04 seem to have been sold nicely. (The
German 13.04 is an outlier in both print and online versions.) Do you
know why that might be the case? That might help answering the
question.

> How many active members do we have?
> @ all, please let us know via this list if you are still interested in
> contributing as an author, editor, translator, screenshot editor or
> coordinator.

I am still interested, both as an author and/or an editor. In the
meantime, what does the coordinator role entail, in practice?

>
> Standard versions or only LTS versions?

Looking at the numbers, download rates seem to spike mostly on LTS
versions, except for 14.04 (which has few downloads). 13.10 seems to
be an exception and to have stolen 14.04's success for some reason,
both in print and in downloads.

I'd say, only LTS. Trying to catch up with things every 6 months while
the demand for it doesn't quite exist is probably a bad idea.

Focusing on
- fixing existing bugs during the time between two LTS versions and
- adapting the last manual version to the next LTS version during the
freeze/release stage of a new LTS
would probably save a lot of time (and leg work) for us.

>
> How can you contribute?
> By dividing the work in chapters and sections, contributors
> (authors/editors) can decide what chapter they want to work on.

I prefer to work on a small section for the next LTS version and on a
chapter or two for bug fixing for the current LTS version. But I am
not sure which sections and chapters need urgent attention or which
ones are more important etc.

>
> Here are some statistics.
>

I had to visualize these using a quick and dirty spreadsheet. Let me
know if you'd like me to share that with you or the list (unsure if
list allows attachments).

Also, I had two questions after seeing the stats. One is, do we have a
means to effectively reach out to non-English linux user groups and
ask for help on translations (of say a shortened, more generic version
of the manual) to languages we don't have? The other one is, do we
have a way to ask Canonical what their paid users ask about the most
in terms of support? That could help us prioritize certain chapters
over others etc. (Also, please let me know if there is a resource on
what chapters / sections are prioritized.)

Thanks,
Mehmet.