Documentation idea - was [mythtv-users] howIdidit: Debian+Myth from scratch using mdz'spkgs

[Edward Wildgoose]

What do you guys think about adding a wiki to the mythtv site for more informal documentation (have a look at,say, squirrelmail to see someone else use this).

I can setup a demo wiki (twiki is my preferred choice because it allows pictures to be added fairly easily) to show you why it is a feasible method.

The idea is that it is slightly more structured than a forum (personally I find these very useful, but you have to read and digest a lot to find the answer).  But it is less structured than the professional docs that get put on the main documentation website.

The idea of a wiki is that every page has an edit link and so it is easy to update it and add to it.  For example if we have a "Success Stories" page, then people could easily add to it, and because it is more like documentation it should be slightly easier than say reading through the forum thread on this mailing list about success stories.

However, we would still keep discussion here on the mailing list.  The point is that the mailing list tends to contain huge nuggets of gold, but it is quite well watered down by each preceding discussion before it is solved.  Having something like the wiki would give people a place to jot down the conclusions easily perhaps...

Any comments?

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Lou [mailto:dlou99 at yahoo.com]
Sent: 09 April 2003 06:25
To: mythtv-users at snowman.net
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] howIdidit: Debian+Myth from scratch using
mdz'spkgs



>If you found more information or can clarify
confusing info
>in the docs, you should contribute your additions,
suggestions
>and corrections to the documentation that is included
in the
>distribution. Storing your information on a separate
website
>may not in the best interests of new users of MythTV.

If there was anything that was confusing, it was that
the documentation
seemed mainly geared towards those building Myth from
the sources
and the Debian packages seemed to need a bit of
undocumented groundwork
prior to installing/running.  Doing an "apt-get
install mythtv" on
a minimal base Debian installation wasn't very
productive for me!

>Clearly you believe this information can be useful so
please
>consider giving something back to the project by
contributing
>to the documentation so that your advice can be
accessible
>to the intended audience.

As for the me believing the information can be useful,
I had never really
considered widespread distribution until I read Tom's
requests for
"How I Did It" notes.  The comments and suggestions I
was soliciting
was on how I could achieve a better installation
and/or configuration,
not on how to improve what I wrote.  As for being
added to Robert's docs
(he's the guy that wrote the HOWTO on mythtv.org,
right?), I'm not sure
that's the right place.  It seems that a lot of what I
went through was
specific to mdz's Debian packages.  An installation
procedure specific to
those packages would probably be better accompanying
those packages, or
perhaps contained in the package.