Hi Anne,

Thanks for bringing up the issue. It was something I'd wondered about, but I apologize for not searching more diligently for some information on the dividing line between Techbase and Userbase.

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson@googlemail.com> wrote:
I need some input on what is for me a tricky problem.  When we started
UserBase I felt that I was quite clear as to what was relevant, and what was
Techbase material.  We spelled it out on http://userbase.kde.org/Userbase.
However, I am again facing the problem of someone who wants to give detailed
instructions on how to compile an application from source.
http://userbase.kde.org/Tellico/Compiling.  Every time I have spoken to
regular contributors on Userbase the reply has been unanimous - this is not
what Userbase was set up for.

Clearly this is outside the remit that we first understood.  On the other
hand, looking at Techbase's structure, there is no obvious home for it there.
I would like some opinions on how we should cater for that group of users -
power users? - who want to build a package from source because their distro
doesn't provide it.  I see them as being probably much more knowledgeable than
the average user, but on the other hand not developers either.

Let me push back on that definition a bit. The page on Userbase for compilation instructions for Tellico was originally in the Tellico documentation. When I changed from autoconf/configure to cmake, the info became out of date. When I had the first release for KDE4, many users were rather impatient to get it immediately rather than waiting for distribution support. Believe me, I've never gotten so many emails complaining about not knowing how to compile.

I urged them strongly to wait for packages from the distributions, but in the mean time, I put up the page. For several of the people who emailed me, Tellico was the first package they'd ever tried to compile. For better or for worse, they weren't more knowledgeable at all.
 
One other note is that some distros are making packages without webcam support, or without cddb support. And when a user asks how to compile Tellico on their own in that case, I need to have a page to send them to. It's also in the COMPILING file in the source tarball now.

I suspect that the only sensible way is to make a decision to support those
users in a section either on userbase or on techbase, and try to enforce it
fairly strictly.  Personally I would prefer it to be a section of Techbase,
hoping that it would encourage that type of user to explore Techbase and
possibly become more of a contributor.  If that's not acceptable I have to
think about how we can handle it in Userbase, without risking ordinary users
being frightened away because they see pages of build instructions.

I'm happy to move it to Techbase. I'd just modify the link in the primary Tellico page http://userbase.kde.org/Tellico to point to that page. But it's a wide grey area, I think, about how to divide that kind of info. I can put a big fat warning on the main Userbase Tellico page when I link to the compiling instructions.

I'd started to put up some articles about using Tellico on the Tellico website itself. But with the extra exposure and translation opportunity on Userbase, I decided to start putting things there. Upcoming pages could include

  - Installing scripts from kde-files.org (not writing scripts, just installing them, which involves copying files)
  - Installing template files (there's a button for this, but for completeness, I would include command-line instructions)
  - DBUS examples

along with "typical" userbase stuff like step-by-step instructions for doing things in Tellico, etc. But should those "atypical" things go on Techbase? I'd welcome any feedback.

Thanks!
Robby