Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

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On Fri, 2013-07-12 at 17:55 +0100, Aaron Philpott wrote:
> I figure now is the point that I should input somewhat into Michael's
> thoughts on the Wiki and documentation.
> 
> 
> For those of you who don't me, I'm Aaron (AzzyChill) online and have
> created one video on IPFire with the plan to develop more in future.
> I am relatively new to the IPFire project having only really used
> Untangle for my corporate clients due to its ease of use for both me
> as an IT support person and my clients as end users of the system I
> install.

Welcome :)

> I mentioned recently in my regular Brew Time segments that IPFire is
> an amazing project but the support available isn't as good as it could
> be and so it could put a lot of people off, both seasoned IT
> professionals and noobs who are going into IT pretty clueless as to
> what they're doing.

What made me realize that we have to do more about documentation and
these things was seeing you being confused about how to install IPFire.
It's not that you don't have the general knowledge about how to do
things, but of course you don't have a clue *where* to start when you
install IPFire for the first time.

Being not too noob-friendly is okay and to some extend I think we should
not be too noob-friendly because firewalls are not for noobs.
But lacking essential information for all other people who start with
IPFire is not okay.

> I pretty much agree with everything that Michael has said including
> the bits about language.  I am from the UK and hence English is my
> native language, due to failings in the education system of the UK it
> is also my only language.  One would assume that most residents of
> Germany speak English as well and so starting from English probably
> isn't a bad idea.  But language links in with the end plan and the
> future for IPFire because currently the majority of your users are
> based in Germany and speak German and so it would make sense to write
> everything in German and then translate it to other languages.  But if
> the plan is to try and expand the project to other markets
> internationally English would be the best language to use because it
> is an international language.

That's exactly the point and I don't understand all the fuzz about the
language. People in America and the UK speak English. Nothing else.
All the rest of Europe and the Americas and parts of Asia are used to
communicate in English (at least reading).
All other Open Source projects are in English. There is not a single
major project I know that is not running in English.

And English is also the language for development in the IPFire project.
We use it in Bugzilla, we use it on our mailing lists, we use it
everywhere. The majority of the people who use IPFire is not from
Germany, so there is absolutely no point in choosing any other language
than English.

-Michael