blogs.lydgate.org

You won’t be surprised to hear that at Akademy I spent a good deal of time talking to people about UserBase, how we can improve it, and how it can help with documentation problems.  Several exciting improvements are expected in the next few weeks, but I’m leaving that as a teaser for now.  First I want to talk about just one of the ideas that was floated, as we sat watching people stir the barbeque.

Just a reminder – if you are going to trans late in UserBase you need to

• request addition to the Translator group
• when you have confirmation, open the page Special:LanguageStats/your-country-code to see which pages need your attention
• Please don’t use the redlinks in the old language bar – those pages will be lost when migration is complete.
• Those in the Translation group should be able to see “Translate this Page” on any page that has been prepared.  That link takes you to the page where you choose your language.

After almost a year of planning we now have the TranslateWiki facility on UserBase!  What difference does that make?  A lot!  For a start, it means a completely new way of working, if you’ve been one of our faithful on-line translators.  It takes a little getting used to, but it has big advantages for the future, and will, in the long run, save you a lot of work.  To explain how, I need to tell you something about its capabilities first.

Producing a Manual

Off-Line Translations

How Does it Work?

Migration

Happy Christmas, everyone.  Time enough for work in a few days

Reading my newest Linux Format I was delighted to hear that there is a project in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, that uses donated/recycled computers.  I live in West Yorkshire, but in the south-west corner, so Sheffield is a mere 40 minutes drive away.  Naturally I followed this up – an opportunity too good to miss.  If you live in the mid- to north of England, take a look at http://www.access-space.org/?c=recycling

I was curious to know more about the activities of Access Space – and amazed and delighted at what I saw there.  The most surprising thing was http://www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk/ !  The Html Patchwork, no less.  Every cell of the patchwork represents the hexadecimal colours, and every contributor gets web space to tell about their work and activities.  The resulting patchwork was displayed in Sweden this summer, but if you live in or near San Francisco you can see it during October to next January, at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art.

Then there’s LOSS – The Linux Open Source Sound project.  Electronica is not my kind of music, but I did sample a few tracks – they appear to all be Creative Commons licensed.  For a smile you really should listen to the Jake Harries -Eh? track.  The CD was recorded in 2006, but I did notice that at least one upload was in 2009, so presumably the project is still active.

Part III – coming shortly – has news about developments related to UserBase in particular and our wikis in general.

Two weeks since I last wrote, and so much has happened that this feels a bit like a scatter-gun approach, to tell about everything.  Anyway, let’s start by looking at UserBase’s current statistics.

We now have 935 pages of content (how soon can we make it 1000?), disregarding the discussion pages, which have attracted 1,806,159 views!  A tremendous number.  Our registered member number has gone up too, to 819.  Still only a small proportion of members actively contribute, but that is noticeably more than it was a few months ago.

These are the top-10 contribution statistics for the past seven days (yes, eleven again):

Once more our translators account for a large number of edits, but it’s good to see some new names among the content providers as well, and the list can’t include the names of people who send content to me and ask me to add it.

When I look at the Popular Pages statistics, I am somewhat surprised at what I find, though.

Most viewed pages:

The kde-pim applications clearly are heavy attractors.  Although I expected that to some extent, I expected to see more emphasis on some of the other categories, such as Internet, or Multimedia.

Let me start with a few relevant facts about my life.  As some of you will know, I spend 60-70 hours every week helping with mailing lists, forums and userbase.  It is a huge part of my life.  However, in a few weeks’ time I will be 70, and I have a serious heart condition.  I may be here for a few years yet, or I may be gone tomorrow.  And what will be my legacy to KDE?  At the moment it’s a handful (albeit a big handful) of wiki pages.  That’s not what I want my legacy to be.

I have a dream for that, and it’s realisable.  I want to leave a system that will spell an end to ancient documentation.  A system that is easy to use and light on time required to maintain it.  A pipe-dream?  No, I don’t think it is.  Several people have said that drafting documentation on a wiki is much easier than working directly to docbook, but getting the parts to talk to each other really makes it difficult.  I’ve talked to Albert Astals Cid about what would help language translation, and I’ve talked to Burkhard Lück about what the docbook team need, and I do believe we could get a usable system, and without much delay.  Here’s what I propose:

Stage 1 – the system is triggered by changes to userbase pages.  It first addresses language needs.
Question: is it possible to create RSS feeds for certain groups of pages?
Problem:  currently the Recent Changes RSS feed is broken, sending multiple copies of alerts.  That would have to be fixed first.

Stage 2 – A mediawiki extension outputs a .po syntax file for the changed page.  I         understand that http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Translate would do that.  Reading through the page, it looks as though a set of tools already exist that implement export and import.

Stage 3 – the exported .po file arrives in SVN, where the system follows normal development lines.  It may save translators considerable time if a diff of the last two versions is sent as well.  This information is readily available through the History pages.

Stage 4 – the mediawiki tool poimport.php is used to import the returned .po file into userbase.

Stage 5 – starts the docbook cycle.  The mediawiki extension http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:XML_Bridge creates docbook XML from mediawiki pages.  The proposal page http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/DocBook_XML_export explains how it works.  The resulting output could be made available through docs.kde.org, on distribution disks, and on userbase.

If scripting is needed to make these stages flow, Sayak Banerjee, of forum fame, has agreed to write the scripts for us.  Many thanks to Albert, Burkhard and Sayak for working with me on this.

So – where does that leave us?  Well, before extensions can be added they have to be tested.  For me to do that I need Mediawiki setting up locally, and for that I need a LAMP stack.  None of this is familiar to me, and I’d be working alone, without any form of help.  I could do it, but in a reasonable time-frame?  I doubt that.  So what are the options?  I’m assured that the system would be an enormous time-saver for the i18n and docs teams, so what is the best way forward from here?  Is it possible, for instance, that I could have access to a LAMP stack somewhere else, to be used as a sandbox?  I need all the help and ideas I can get.

Another week almost over, so what is happening in UserBase?  Well, the translation effort continues, and we have some new pages this week – Yakuake, Rekonq, Tutorials/TweakingPlasma and Blogilo – as well as a lot of smaller updates.  We now have 805 pages of content, with 1,437,927 views.  As you see, it is growing healthily.

This section of the statistics caught my eye -

Most viewed pages
Kontact    222,467
Welcome to KDE UserBase    183,468

For a long time GPU-Performance topped the list, but now only has 45,401.  I wonder if this means that there are fewer problems with graphics drivers?

The page http://userbase.kde.org/Applications/Internet is almost complete, except for the Networking section, and there I need to ask for help from someone who uses remote desktop.  I need entries for KRDC, Krfb and KVpnc.  I don’t use them myself, and after reading what I could find, didn’t feel competent to write those.

Current User Statistics

We now have 580 registered users, an increase of 80 in 10 days.

And here are the top 10 of the week’s contributors.
Score  Pages    Changes  Username
67        60           71            Annew
40        33           47           Qiii2006
17        15           16            Claus chr
11          8           11            Kolia
11          8           11            Yurchor
09          5           10            Just
06        3          6          ????? (Apologies if the Chinese characters don’t display)
06           3            6            Andrei natanael
06           6            6            Alisha
05           3           4             Gdebure

Half of those are people who were not in the last list I published, which is very encouraging.

Last Monday I invited you to come and talk to me on #userbase, and I’m pleased to say that severl people did.  We had a long conversation, at the end of which we decided that we must record our discussion in a shared document with a view to calling a meeting for anyone interested to discuss possible changes in UserBase.  We have not yet set a date, but it will probably be in a week or so.  I’ll make sure that the date is publicised.

In outline, we discussed the following:

* There is a lack of consistency of approach.  Many pages follow a common form, but several don’t.
* Currently there’s no obvious way of knowing how recently the page was written or edited.  Considering the rate of change in KDE 4, this is significant.
* A question was asked about the usefulness of a rating system, and its feasibility
* A number of applications were identified that currently have no entry
* Some new applications are strictly Qt, rather than KDE.  How should we deal with that?
* Some sort of visual tour, possibly video, was proposed as an introduction to KDE
* There is still no working solution to the problems that require access to the servers
* UserBase still lacks visibility.  It rarely gets picked up, for instance, in a google search, even though we may have an authoratative answer to a problem, while dubious mailing list answers are found.  Some suggestions for improving visibility were proposed.

I consider that some very useful exchanges of opinion and ideas were made, and I hope you’ll join us to discuss these and any other comments you have.  At the moment we are still using #userbase, but any day now we will be on #kde-userbase.  See you there!

Many people know me through my work with UserBase , where I’m a (the?) major contributor.  I’ve seen myself described as the UserBase maintainer. That’s in no way an official title but today that’s the hat I’m wearing.

UserBase has the potential to be a truly awesome resource, and if you look at some of the statistics it’s getting there.  782 content pages.  539 registered users.  Total views 1,387,442.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  But what about this statistic? – Users who have performed an action in the last 7 days 14! And when you look at the Special:ContributionScores you see that, taking out the excellent work being done by translators (Claus_chr, Yurchor, Qiii2006 and Alisha in particular) you can only conclude that there’s simply not much new content being added.  That’s a terrible shame, considering the cumulative knowledge of 539 registered users.

I’ve been worrying about this for some time, so when I saw a link to http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/03/professional-team-management-tips-for-creative-folks/ and found the heading “Know Your Team” I began to wonder just who is ‘my team’.  In truth, I know very little about most of the 539 people who have registered, so now it’s time to find out.  Why did you register?  What are your hopes, your expectations?  How can I help you become more involved?

I’ve talked to a few people when they identify a problem with which they would like help, but waiting for that to start a conversation just isn’t enough, so I’ve registered a new channel, #userbase, on Freenode.  I’ll be around most days, so I hope you’ll join me there.  Tell me about the applications you like to use.  Tell me your favourite features.  Tell me what you wanted to know and couldn’t find information about.  Tell me how we can make UserBase into a truly awesome beast.

I haven’t talked about UserBase for a while, but it’s still actively growing.  We now have 749 pages of content, not counting discussion pages.  I suspect that a lot of the recent growth is down to the efforts of Claus_chr, Qiii2006 and Yurchor, who have all been busily translating and they’ve recently been joined by Alisha and Caig.

The other good news is that we have had more than 1.33 million views of UserBase pages – something to be proud of.  We now have 500 registered users, but nowhere near that number actively contributing.  However, I’ve decided that from time to time I’ll publish the list of top 10 contributors.  So here is the first edition:

Over the last 7 days -
Score      Pages      Changes    Username
49           46            48               Claus chr
34           26            41               Alisha
30           23             37              Qiii2006
25           19             27              Yurchor
14           10            14               Annew
13             1            38               Hans
10             8              9               Caig
09             5              9               Membrive
07             4             6               The madman
01             1             1               ThorstenStaerk
01             1             1                Gdebure

Yes, I know that’s eleven, but it wouldn’t be fair to separate the last two.  An Overall Top Ten contribution list would contain mostly the same names.  You can see from the list above that it wouldn’t take much to get you into the week’s top ten.  Let’s see if the list is noticeably different next time I write.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of applications for which we have little or no information.  Let’s see whether, during October, we can complete the list of entries for the Applications/Internet section.  We need pages for Choqok, Blogilo, KRDC, Krfb, KVpnc, and Kdebluetooth.  If you are not confident with mediawiki markup and want help, you can find me (annew) on IRC most days.

Last month I was asked to jointly moderate the Office & Productivity forum, which of course has led to me spending more time in the forums than I had done previously.  I’ve never been a forum-lover, but I’m impressed with this forum.  It does seem much more pleasant and helpful than forums I’ve visited in the past.  I’ve been giving user support on mailing lists for several years, and for the first time I’m seriously thinking of leaving them.  After a year where I’ve watched general manners and behaviour deteriorate to downright rudeness it has, thankfully, quietened down.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that almost every distro-related list seems to be full of bike-shedding now.  There are few questions where I can help, and I wonder if I can justify the time given, for so little result.

One last thing – this week I have converted the desktops of two non-tech users to KDE 4.2.  They both use Mandriva, so I hope to get them on 4.3 next month, when Mandriva 2010 comes out.  One of the users is still on holiday, so I’ll have to wait for reaction there.  The other user just carried on using the same few apps as always, and apart from a small panic about where to find the shutdown button (his first look at kickoff, and didn’t immediately see that it was tabbed), had no reaction at all.  The other user is a little more demanding, so likely to have more questions.  The next couple of weeks should be interesting.