A wiki is supposed to be an easy place for all to contribute to documentation, but when we held an IRC meeting about UserBase, back in October, it was clear that not everyone found the wikis welcoming or comfortable.  We’ve started several initiatives to solve, or at least alleviate, some of the problems.

Getting Started

First, we have made sure that ‘Help’ in the navigation panel  points to http://userbase.kde.org/Help:Contents – where general guidance is found.  Then, right at the bottom of the page is a Category link.  Clicking on that takes you to a page that lists other pages that you might find helpful – some to help you quickly find what you need, and others to help you get started contributing.  At the moment the English pages are, I believe, fully represented.  Currently you will see some translated pages listed there, but work is in hand to improve this, giving languages their own Category links.  Watch this space!

Getting Help

So – you’ve found your way around a bit, and know roughly what you want to say, but you’re still finding the whole thing a bit daunting.  Well, the first thing is to remember that you are not working in a vacuum.  Sign on to #kde-www on irc.freenode.org and there will always be someone around to help.  Even better – starting next weekend we have a Klassroom course on contributing to UserBase.  Sign on at http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=84864.

Tell me about the course?

The aim is quite simple – to make you familiar and comfortable with the tools of mediawiki editing and the layout of a typical UserBase page.  This course is for you if

• You are a user without development skills and want to make your contribution by helping others to enjoy KDE software
• An application that you use frequently has little, or outdated, documentation on userbase, and you know you could help people get more out of it.
• You are a developer, and your application is under-represented, or not represented on UserBase.
• You are a developer and have documentation elsewhere but want an easier place to work with it.

You will work on a UserBase page, asking questions on a dedicated forum thread.  You will see questions asked and answers received by other students.  You will do the work at times when it suits you.  Help pages have been prepared to give you all the tools you are likely to need.  In fact, the aim is to make it as un-threatening as possible.

Sign up

This week is sign-up time.  We look forward to seeing you on http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=84864 or come along to #kde-www to ask questions.