wiki describes development, not user documentation, contributions for help.ubuntu.com welcome

[Selene ToyKeeper]

The main wiki page about Software Center ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter ) seems to be all about planning and development, without much data that would be useful to end users. Could this perhaps be re-organized, and some user documentation written? Here is the specific request I got about it:

[ISD Customer Support #5037]
From: <email address hidden>

Hello,
I'm a little bit confused about the informations about the software-center in the official wiki. It contains many future options. The main thing I want to know is: how can I purchase software in detail, which payments are accepted (paypal ...), will I get a special deb://... for my sources to download software? Via Email or where will I get it? Can this software I purchased used in future releases of ubuntu too? Will there be a software-center for Kubuntu? It would be nice if you could give me detailled informations, because I want to add these missing informations to our official german wiki you can find here: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Software-Center / http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwiki.ubuntuusers.de%2FSoftware-Center

Regards
Marc

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

A user who is using software-center could extend/finish community documentation based on the Wiki.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareCenterFAQ#Future_Plans
e.g. link to FAQ for Ubuntu pay is on Wiki page.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Pay/FAQs
There is an open Bug #801841 regarding payment-service issue with credit card.

Wiki specification section 'The help should cover these topics:' or Pay/FAQ may include which payments are accepted.

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

Er, I added the Ubuntu Pay FAQs. I had originally planned to add it inline on the Software Center page, but it didn't seem to be appropriate there based on the other content. I think perhaps the current page should be moved to SoftwareCenterDevelopment or SoftwareCenterPlans, and replaced by user-level documentation.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The second sentence of the first paragraph of <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter> says "This document is a living specification, describing for designers, developers, testers, and potential contributors how USC is supposed to work." It is not, and has never been, intended to be "useful to end users". That is why it's on wiki.ubuntu.com, rather than help.ubuntu.com -- and why it briefly specifies what the USC help should contain, rather than providing actual help.

So any page linking to <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter> as if it is user-level documentation is wrong. I have removed the link from <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareCenterFAQ>.

The page has been similarly clear that it is a specification, not help, since June 2009, only a couple of months after the project began, and four months *before* the release of Ubuntu Software Center 1.0. For that reason, I think renaming the page would not help. People who link to it as if it is help under its current address would link to it as if it is help under its new address too. I think the only long-term cure for that problem is to change the Ubuntu wiki theme to look unambiguously like a contributor zone, not a user zone.

As for Ubuntu Software Center's actual help, it is deliberately vague about what kinds of payments are accepted, because these can change on the payment server without any update to USC itself. The help could go into more detail about what happens when the payment is accepted, though.

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Although first paragraph is pretty clear assume the term 'wiki' confused because german ubuntuusers also call their community help documentation 'wiki', so maybe while searching for documentation they lookup wiki.ubuntu.com instead help.ubuntu.com. My guess results from using the term 'official wiki' in the request which may lead german locales to equal it with a help documentation for end users. Not saying it isn't useful though, actually it's very interesting for end users too.

As far as I remember previous Ubuntu Wiki pages had the term 'specs' in url.
e.g.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/PolicyKitIntegration
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/LucidUbuntuOneMusicStore

Maybe just adding bold 'Specification' or 'Dev Specification' to each title (or below) helps to distinguish it from community help docs.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

In June 2006, English Ubuntu help pages moved from wiki.ubuntu.com to help.ubuntu.com, leaving the former exclusively for contributor information. If anyone writes a help page on wiki.ubuntu.com, and a member of the Documentation Team discovers it, they move it to help.ubuntu.com.

I respectfully suggest that Ubuntu Deutschland eV make an equivalent move with wiki.ubuntuusers.de. As long as they don't, German Ubuntu users will get confused about what wiki.ubuntu.com is for, at no fault of those writing on it.

I'll spare you the laundry list of specifications on wiki.ubuntu.com that don't have "specs" in their URL. Suffice to say that adding it to the URL of every specification would be a lot of work and linkrot, for the sake of something which is a problem with ubuntuusers.de in the first place.