It would be great if you could start a site feedback topic and elaborate on this a little. We have lots of sites using a category as a knowledge base, as well as ourselves, and weāre always looking for ways to improve if you have any thoughts or feedback to offer.
Thanks. I was really just referring to the fact that ādiscussion-based docsā tend to be hard work for new users as it often involves reading a post followed by a thread of discussion that updates or modifies the OP. But I speak for myself of course and I can see others might not see it that way
Yeah, Iām not a fan of that either. And long reply tails can often feel daunting in and of themselves. The idea for here (though I appreciate thereās often a lag) is to move all relevant information into the OP so as not to have that situation. We also try and break off distinct discussions into separate topics as well (tagged, when we can) to make them more searchable too. We also have some auto-delete timers that clear out older replies after a certain time. Itās a work in progress, but hopefully weāre moving in the right direction.
Yes. I think to an extent you canāt avoid the confusions but itās good to know youāre trying (although I doubt youād go so far as to delete comments which have been incorporated into a subsequently edited OP, which is often the main time-waster).
But my original point was not really about that. I think Iāve realised a bit too late that youāre of course not a F/LOSS project, so may not appreciate randos like me trying to offer āhelpā.
We appreciate docs and advice created by the community.
The auto-delete timer is rather indiscriminate, so it can be a double-edged sword. But the intent is to calve off the suggestion to change the doc into a separate topic so as to retain the history where necessary/useful. Itās an, um, āorganicā process so you may find some/many examples of where this hasnāt been the case.
Though weāre reasonably responsive if you spot something and think it should be changed/improved in some way.
Thatās not what I was referring to, did you look at the link I provided?
I wasnāt directing you to the the documents category, /docs is instead generated by the discourse docs plugin.
The interface is pretty different, more akin to a typical knowledge management system, with focused search and filters. It omits the replies, which are periodically rolled up into the original post as you can see from the edit histories.
Thanks, but Iām not sure how thatās relevant to the conversation I thought Iād started, so I kinda blanked it, Iām afraid. Itās nice to know such a plugin exists though, donāt get me wrong
Per your comment that the documentation wasnāt in a suitable format or discoverable I shared a link to the tool here on meta which presents documentation in a different format and includes features that aid with discoverability.
I appreciate coming from a mailman background that the different approach taken here may not be immediately familiar to you. As someone who has spent much of the last nine years offering assistance here on Meta I can assure you that itās incredibly useful to have the documentation in closer proximity to the support discussion.
Oh I see, sorry I misunderstood.
Iām perfectly OK with you doing what you want to do. I was merely curious as to whether youād appreciate me submitting a PR to the repo to add supplementary installation instructions. I can see the answer is that you would not.
So I hereby bow out and thank you for your indulgence
I like that Documentation category and have used it often. Iām confused because I donāt see obvious reasons that it isnāt ideal.
There is lots of useful information there and submitting a contribution there would be appreciated and likely helpful to others.