Yelp to Wiki links

Summary

Yelp to Wiki links proposes adding a "Contribute" button to the Yelp toolbar which links from the active Yelp subpage to corresponding feedback section on a (vendor-)specific documentation wiki.

Rationale

With the MoinDocBook Summer of Code project http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MoinDocBookProject, it will be possible for F/OSS projects to write their documentation directly in a Moin wiki for easy export to the DocBook format and use in Yelp. This also opens up the possibility of users being able to casually comment, share experiences and make new suggestions to the documentation. Microsoft has done some research on this http://infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200412/second.htm, offering the users the option to give feedback, but not to see each other's feedback or see if their suggestions are being used.

A F/OSS project can much better organize its documentation around a wiki and thus make it easy for its users to contribute. Linking to the documentation wiki directly in Yelp will make users aware of the possibility. It is a function that would work best if fully integrated into Yelp, with a button in the toolbar - to make it as visible as possible.

Use cases

Stephan has just started Ubuntu for the first time. He has connected his printer, but it doesn't work right, so he turns to the System Documentation, hopeful that the new system will be helpful. He searches for "Printing" in Yelp, and finds a page that looks relevant. He tries the steps there, but it doesn't work with his kind of printer. After some googling, he finds a Gentoo howto that explains what he needs to do. He notices the Contribute button in Yelp which opens the same page on the Ubuntu Documentation Wiki where he adds a comment about his experience with his printer and links to the Gentoo howto.

Simon the Sorcerer is experimenting with the latest version of OpenSuSe desktop, trying to do automatic uploads of his polymorph scripts whenever he updates them. For some reason, the scripts keep executing when he tries the upload, and he has to spend hours cleaning up toad's vomit and explaining to his mum how his little sister has disappeared. Desperate, Simon turns to the System Documentation to find a solution. He while following the steps in the solution, he notices a blatantly obvious error which he had to work around him self. He adds a sarcastic comment with the answer.

Scope

Creating a simple framework that allows linking from Yelp pages to wiki pages through a Toolbar button. Some sort of easy structure that when a page are exported from Moin, the Doc Book format contains the original web location of that page which Yelp can read and link to through the contribute button.

Design

The Contribute button should have a tool tip, or even some text next to it along the lines of "Does this work for you? Share your experiences, tips and tricks and improve the [program] documentation."

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

Inspiration

Matthew East's discussion of the new Wiki2Docbook export function: http://www.mdke.org/blog/Wiki2Docbook.html

Matthew Paul Thomas' wishlist bug on adding on-line searches to Yelp searches: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344843

Article on Microsoft's use of User Feedback in their documentation: http://infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200412/second.htm

Apps/Yelp/Yelp2Wiki (last edited 2013-11-18 19:11:56 by WilliamJonMcCann)