It appears that we need a Frequently Asked Questions document to go with our introduction of the Wine Fora to the mailing lists. I will start with the first topic: 1. Q. What is Wine and where do I get it? A. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Microsoft Windows (TM) Application Programming Interface (API) for most Linuxes and UNIX variants, including Mac OS X. Wine is usually included as a package with most Linux distributions. More information on Wine is on the main Wine HQ web page at http://www.winehq.org in the About Wine box. This should be posted where the Wine Fora are hosted and we should refer to it when answering questions addressed by the FAQ. A simple "This is addressed in the FAQ located at ...." should suffice, IMHO. Thank you. James McKenzie
James McKenzie wrote:> It appears that we need a Frequently Asked Questions document to go with > our introduction of the Wine Fora to the mailing lists. >WineHQ already has a FAQ on the WineWiki at http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ. I'd think that maintaining and refining the FAQ there would be a much more productive activity. Really there isn't much of a difference in pointing a user to a forum post or pointing them to the Wiki. The Wiki, however, is much easier to maintain. If we need anything "Stickied" to the top of the Forum it should be a Topic called "READ FIRST" which contains a short list of posting guidelines and contains a link to the WineWiki FAQ.
I don't know if this is possible or not but as part of the registration process can the guidelines not be displayed so that the user has to read them before the registration being accepted. I know some people will just click and accept without reading but even if a few are caught it has to be of some benefit right?
Dan Kegel wrote:> On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Jim <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote: > > > I've taken the liberty of adding a Forum Guidelines WineWiki Page: http://wiki.winehq.org/ForumGuidelines . > > > > You might check what the other popular wine forums have for stickies: > > http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wine/ has one for installing WoW > http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=313 has six (!): > > Wine: Do not expect it to work > Stuff I've learned about Wine > Attention: WINE 0.9.53 adds startup Run/RunOnce support! Read me. > HowTo: Get The Latest Wine > Stuff to try before asking for help with Wine > Stuff to include when asking for help with Wine > > - DanI like this. We do need something small - max 10 lines. Noobs don't read FAQs, especially if they are pages long. And we can cover most bases with few simple statements.
Dan Kegel wrote:> > You might check what the other popular wine forums have for stickies: >I've seen them. I think WineHQ can do better. I personally think that forums should be closely tied to a relevant Wiki. Forums are a terrible place for documentation (IMHO). Yet that's where a lot of it ends up because there is often no other place to put it. A related Wiki solves that problem. Instead of creating difficult to maintain documentation with limited exposure and peer review, use a Wiki. WineHQ has one! =) We also have the AppDB which is another fantastic tool. If we encourage its use we don't end up with out of date, misleading, and wrong stickies like the WoW stickie on linuxforums.org. If the sticky points to a HowTo on the AppDB, the kinks tend to resolve themselves more naturally. vitamin wrote:> > I like this. We do need something small - max 10 lines. Noobs don't read FAQs, especially if they are pages long. And we can cover most bases with few simple statements.Yup. I think so to. I think the trick is getting folks to read more. To that end, I think one has to use clever, enticing, titles. I'll admit "Forum Guidelines" sounds dry. Introduce it on the forums as "Forum Guidelines - Your guide to a FAST response" and you'll probably get a few more clicks. I was actually thinking about the FAQ a bit too. I think it could be factored and simplified a bit by pulling a few topics out into separate FAQs. Developer related questions could be put into a separate FAQ and the main FAQ could point to it with a question such as "I'm a developer where's my FAQ?" I think the current FAQ looks a bit daunting with its two page contents listing. I don't know; I'm still rolling a few ideas around and I'll post them here if they solidify.