Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Michael Tremer]

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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

Aw: Re: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Bernhard Bitsch]

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> Gesendet: Samstag, 13. Juli 2013 um 18:20 Uhr
> Von: "Michael Tremer" <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
> An: documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> Betreff: Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow
>
> 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.
> 
That's not really true, http://fireinfo.ipfire.org/stats/geo states that 51% of the systems use German. I suppose this the language the admin is used to. The numbers about countries show an similiar value ( Germany+Austria+Switzerland*2/3 ).
Don't want to restart this discussion, but computer science is an exact science and I'm used to work in this manner.

Re: Aw: Re: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Michael Tremer]

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Beware that we don't have the data of all IPFire systems. Fireinfo is
disabled by default and you will need to enable it after the
installation. Therefore this data is not 100% accurate.

Since we started fireinfo, the amount of systems running in Germany is
decreasing. We are now at 50:50.

So 51% German is not a majority. It's equally distributed and German is
decreasing.

-Michael

On Sun, 2013-07-14 at 22:00 +0200, Bernhard Bitsch wrote:
> > Gesendet: Samstag, 13. Juli 2013 um 18:20 Uhr
> > Von: "Michael Tremer" <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
> > An: documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> > Betreff: Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow
> >
> > 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.
> > 
> That's not really true, http://fireinfo.ipfire.org/stats/geo states that 51% of the systems use German. I suppose this the language the admin is used to. The numbers about countries show an similiar value ( Germany+Austria+Switzerland*2/3 ).
> Don't want to restart this discussion, but computer science is an exact science and I'm used to work in this manner.

Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Michael Tremer]

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Any reason why this discussion has ended without a result?

Are there any suggestions/opinions about the proposed workflow? Can't
believe that there is nothing to talk about...

-Michael

On Sat, 2013-07-13 at 18:20 +0200, Michael Tremer wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Documentation mailing list
> Documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation

Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[R. W. Rodolico]

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On 07/12/2013 07:10 AM, Bernhard Bitsch wrote:
> 
>> On your note about that development has to be involved in this as well:
>> Agreed and I already talked to Arne and Stevee how we can do that in the
>> least time consuming way, because we also don't have much time and loads
>> of things to work on.
> Sorry, documentation is not an addon, but a essential part of development.
> 
>> Writing articles in more than one language is an absolute no-go.
> Agreed. ;)
> 
>> We will leave it at English and write down the most important things one needs
>> to know about a certain add-on or what ever.
> Most developpers are native german speakers. Why not using german?

I vote for English, and not because I am a native speaker, but for the
assumption that more people use it as a second language than German. I
speak English and (very poor) Spanish. I have Russian, Filipino, German
and Spanish native speakers I correspond with regularly because they
learned English in school.

I can't speak for other countries, but in the US, most of the
multilingual learn Spanish, French, German, Russian, Mandarin and
Japanese. However, I believe most of the multilingual in other countries
learn English as their second language, then go on to other languages
after that. I am speaking from my own experience, however, so I may be
wrong on this.

>  
>> I also think that developers are not the best people to write end-user
>> documentation. It is getting to complex and not suitable for beginners
>> any way.
> Also agreed. But without a basic documentation a non-developper can't write a end user doc.
> The devs mainly know about the internals. A non-dev can only study the behaviour or ask the devs.
> 
> - Bernhard
> _______________________________________________
> Documentation mailing list
> Documentation(a)lists.ipfire.org
> http://lists.ipfire.org/mailman/listinfo/documentation
> 

-- 
R. W. "Rod" Rodolico
Daily Data, Inc.
POB 140465
Dallas TX 75214-0465
http://www.dailydata.net
214.827.2170


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Re: Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Michael Tremer]

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On Fri, 2013-07-12 at 14:10 +0200, Bernhard Bitsch wrote:
> > On your note about that development has to be involved in this as well:
> > Agreed and I already talked to Arne and Stevee how we can do that in the
> > least time consuming way, because we also don't have much time and loads
> > of things to work on.
> Sorry, documentation is not an addon, but a essential part of development.

Nobody said that. But we don't have not very much man power in
development and so there is nothing left to write end-user
documentation.

> > Writing articles in more than one language is an absolute no-go.
> Agreed. ;)
> 
> > We will leave it at English and write down the most important things one needs
> > to know about a certain add-on or what ever.
> Most developpers are native german speakers. Why not using german?

Because there are not enough people around who speak German and an other
language to translate the content to. Just take it as it is: German is
not the first language of this wiki and never will be.

The reasons for that are obvious and I have explained them to you more
than once. So stop ranting about this on every occasion.

> > I also think that developers are not the best people to write end-user
> > documentation. It is getting to complex and not suitable for beginners
> > any way.
> Also agreed. But without a basic documentation a non-developper can't write a end user doc.
> The devs mainly know about the internals. A non-dev can only study the behaviour or ask the devs.

What do you need to know about the "internals". Not very much.
Development documentation and end-user documentation are two completely
different things and we should not confuse those two.

As pointed out in my other email, I don't want to talk about development
documentation here and I also don't want to talk about how the
developers interact with the documentation team. There will be an
information exchange, but I am not sure in what form at the moment and
we will need to figure that out in the development team first.

-Michael

Aw: Re: IPFire Wiki Workflow

[Bernhard Bitsch]

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> On your note about that development has to be involved in this as well:
> Agreed and I already talked to Arne and Stevee how we can do that in the
> least time consuming way, because we also don't have much time and loads
> of things to work on.
Sorry, documentation is not an addon, but a essential part of development.

> Writing articles in more than one language is an absolute no-go.
Agreed. ;)

> We will leave it at English and write down the most important things one needs
> to know about a certain add-on or what ever.
Most developpers are native german speakers. Why not using german?
 
> I also think that developers are not the best people to write end-user
> documentation. It is getting to complex and not suitable for beginners
> any way.
Also agreed. But without a basic documentation a non-developper can't write a end user doc.
The devs mainly know about the internals. A non-dev can only study the behaviour or ask the devs.

- Bernhard