2013-04-02, 20:43
(2013-04-02, 06:29)freakydisco Wrote: Again, most of this is already on the wiki right now. We just need people to help keep things updated, connect links between pages, etc. It's all nice and fine to say "that would be great" but if no one does it then it never happens.
Bull. It is without a doubt the worst wiki I have ever used. *snip*
Actually, the root problem is XBMC. A perfect program shouldn't require a manual. It should either be intuitive or have some kind of in-app guide/wizard/descriptive settings/whatever.
We just can't have everything we want. We can't have a free, open source, super flexible and powerful media center, without some complexity. At least not without time. Even then, as time goes on, more features get added, cycle repeats. We're improving, sure, but I doubt there will be a time when XBMC doesn't require a manual for something. We should aim for never needing a manual, but that would mean stopping all other development, kidnapping more developers, and forcing them at gunpoint to develop something that might not even fit everyone's needs. By the time it wouldn't need a manual, it would be outdated and no one would want to use it anymore.
About the wiki:
The wiki has it's problems, for sure, but it's a wiki. Everything is editable on a wiki. Every. Single. Letter.
I know about wikis, but I have to learn about manuals. I wasn't born knowing how to teach. When I write a how-to, I have to figure out an easy way to state something for other people to understand, or making sure it isn't overwhelming, or the advice doesn't break something else. Often it also involves learning about that topic in XBMC in the first place (no one person, not even on Team XBMC, knows the in's and out's of every single feature off the top of their head.)
Because the wiki is so editable, that also means often coming up with the layout and navigation from scratch. How should a group of topics be laid out? Should they be separate pages? Does that look like a wall of text, thus making multiple smaller pages better? But then you have to hop around pages? Where do you draw the line?
Ah, but there's technical solutions to some of this. The wiki has what's called templates and labeled section transclusion, which I'm slowly working into various pages. Basically, it's a way to have information show up in multiple places, but only have to update/edit it from one place. That way you can have specific pages for a task, without having to hop around to other pages, but without having to worry about those specific pages becoming outdated.
Still, I had to learn how to install those wiki extensions to enable this, and learn how to best use them. Then I have to learn how to teach other people to use them. Even after all that, those tools only make it easier, they still don't do the job for you.
On top of that, most of the content on the wiki existed long before I joined Team XBMC, and it's a lot to go through. Most of it just needs some reorganization to make things easier to find. You should have seen it when it still talked about the xbox being supported and some things would have 5 pages on the same topic, because 5 different people started pages without knowing about the other 4 pages. We've come a long way since then.
Did I mention that I'm a human that has to work to feed myself, and no one gets paid to work on the wiki?
We basically said "help us improve this, because we already know it's not the best" and instead of giving feedback and being part of the solution, you've dismissed the entire thing, including all the countless hours that I've personally spent on it. That's a good way to tick people off.
