Hi folks,

Recently I wrote to the KDE Docs team and KDE WWW team asking for
permission to put working copies of the Kubuntu documentation on the
Userbase wiki. Albert raised an interesting objection, which I can
only bring to this group for discussion.

Kubuntu isn't a KDE project under the Manifesto definition. Even
though our users are by definition KDE users, it is true that all KDE
developers do not have write permissions to the Kubuntu codebase,
since our packages are hosted on Canonical servers.

I'll reproduce my original email so you can judge for yourself:


Hi folks, I know this is a bit unusual, but I'm writing to both the
Doc team and web team simultaneously because the Kubuntu Doc team has
a problem, and it is possible y'all can help us, if you are willing.

Right now, we develop our documentation on the ubuntu wiki system,
which is MoinMoin. This works well in that there is a low bar to entry
for new folks, and errors can be fixed on the fly. Of course much of
the documentation our users need is either on the Ubuntu system or the
excellent KDE system, and much of our docs merely points or includes
that material.

There are problems as well. Moinmoin has no good system for exporting
docs to Docbook so they can be included in the ISO, and there is no
easy way to let translators help us internationalize once the
documentation is complete and up-to-date.

We wonder if it would be possible to move our wiki over to the KDE
mediawiki system, with its wonderful translator helps. We could do
this either as a standalone part of the system, sort of off to the
side, or what we would prefer: be an actual part of Userbase, as part
of /Distributions or similar.

After translations are done, then perhaps we can get the help of the
Doc team to get the Docbook magic done, so that we have the necessary
packages to distribute to our users.

A few of us have brought some of these ideas to the teams in IRC, but
we're getting to the time in the release cycle where we have to make
some decisions.

What do you think?


And in another email in that conversation:

We want to move the docs *wiki* to the KDE wiki system.

We present our finished docs in two places: the most important is in
the ISO, and the other is on http://docs.kubuntu.org. So our finished
docs wouldn't change, except that we hope that we will also have
translations. Right now, we have none of those wonderful translations.

IF the web team is cool with us using the KDE userbase wiki to work on
Kubuntu docs, then we will write to the translation teams and see if
they are willing to help us out that way. There are Kubuntu
translators who are willing to help as well, but there is no easy way
for them to do that right now. The userbase translation plugin would
be really helpful to us.

I think it would be difficult for KDE to allow us to present our
finished docs on kde.org infra, when other distros don't do this.

And later yet;

Kubuntu users ARE KDE users, and most of our Kubuntu people are active
directly in KDE too. One of my ulterior goals for using KDE infra for
part of our work process is to get those who aren't working directly
for KDE used to doing so.

Well-translated docs helps us all.

It is possibly true that we could install mediawiki on our Kubuntu.org
server, and some of the guys want to do that. I think that without the
excellent support of both the web-team AND the underlying sysadmin
support, that wiki would slowly become a cesspit of spam.

The Canonical sysadmins are rather remote and unresponsive. I doubt we
could get them to do such a major install in less than months, if not
years. Probably if we can't get KDE community buy-in, then we'll
continue to limp along on moinmoin, and lack much translation.


Again, I realize that this is an unusual request, but we hope, as part
of the KDE community, that we can get permission to use a part of the
Userbase wiki, and use the talent and experience of KDE translators
working with us on our documentation.

All the best,

Valorie
-- 
http://about.me/valoriez
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