[FM Discuss] Does FLOSS Manuals hurt other doc efforts?

[Tomi Toivio]

Here in Finland people doing Linux.fi wiki seem to think that there should
be only one open source documentation wiki, which would be their wiki. Of
course it is a limited language area which has less people who would be able
or interested to contribute to a documentation project like this. Anyhow
Linux.fi is mostly shorter articles while FLOSS Manuals has long manuals, so
I don't see these as overlapping projects. It is similar to the relationship
between Wikipedia and Wikibooks.

2010/11/17 Scott Nesbitt <nesbitt.scott at gmail.com>

> This is something that Adam and I have been discussing in a few emails, and
> now it's time to take the idea to the wider list for comment.
>
> Here's the background: last month, I did a presentation about FLOSS Manuals
> at the Free Software Open Source Symposium. During the presentation (and a
> couple of times during the day) people asked me if FLOSS Manuals drives
> people away from the "official" documentation. I try to explain that one of
> the goals of FLOSS Manuals is to get people up and running with whatever
> technology quickly and in a very friendly way. But FMs don't cover
> everything -- FLOSS Manuals gets you going. If you want to delve deep, deep
> into the software or technology, the official docs are still there. That
> seems to get them even more interested.
>
> But that question showed something of a gap in perception, IMO. In my mind,
> it's not FLOSS Manuals vs. the official documentation or other docs/sources
> of information. There's not such thing as too much documentation and no one
> source can be THE source. FM doesn't try to be the last word in
> documentation. It doesn't answer all the questions or have all the
> information. The FM should (and usually does) point people to other sources
> of documentation so they can get a deeper view.
>
> So, what are your thoughts on this? Does FLOSS Manuals hurt, hinder, or put
> into the shade other documentation efforts? Or are we one big ecosystem,
> living in something akin to symbiosis (or commensalism)? Let's get some
> discussion going!
>
> I'm looking forward to your comments. Which, unfortunately, I won't be able
> to read until this evening (Eastern time) :-)
>
> Scott
>
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>
>


-- 
Best Regards
Tomi Toivio
Open Source Coordinator
http://fi.flossmanuals.net/
tomi at flossmanuals.net
+358445488856
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