Question Documentation

My expereince with Kunena is about 3 days. I have installed and am starting to develope my forum. However, it is hard to find information about how to do things. I have gone to the wiki and found the documentation to lacking. Have I missed something? I am looking for something more like a reference manual where I can look up a feature or an explanation of a setting. The wiki seems to have articles and FAQ but looks disjointed. Is there something more like a reference manual available? That way I can look up stuff instead of junking up the forum with my newbbie questions:)

philbailey wrote: I have gone to the wiki and found the documentation to lacking.

G'day, philbailey, and welcome to Kunena.

Thank you for your feedback. In general I have to agree with you; I agree with you that the Wiki documentation is, in parts, a little "thin" and I would really appreciate some extra help in this regard. The whole Kunena project team would appreciate help to improve the quality and the comprehensiveness of the documentation however this seems to be one of those chores that many people consider disagreeable and they usually avoid doing anything about it.

There isn't much reward for researching how things are supposed to work, writing a few hundred words (or a couple of thousand) and putting together an article (with pictures, perhaps) in a way that others can read and make sense from. It's hard work spending an hour or two (or more) writing an article that many people may not even read.

However, none of these are valid excuses for not trying.

So, let me ask you (and everyone else who is reading this topio) in what ways, specifically, is the Wiki documentation lacking?

Perhaps if we had the top five, most-needed topics sorted out, we might have fewer questions asked? If five is too low a number, how about ten? What do you think are the top five (or ten, but no more) articles that need to be written, or re-written, or updated? If we knew (and we could agree upon) the top five topics then we could start work now to fix those issues. Does this seem like a reasonable plan of action to you?

I'm prepared to put the effort into addressing those top five topics, if people are willing to help us identify what those issues should be.

Thank you, Phil, for starting this topic. It's a really good topic!

Thanks for the reply. While I was "complaining", it really wasn't meant to be a complaint, more of a confirmation question. I know the problems keeping up documentation if even you are paid for it. (I hated it, more fun to code). But the issue here, as you have addressed, is that you guys are spending a lot of time answering questions that you wouldnt have to spend the time to do if there was better documentation. However how do you get the time for you to write the documentation because you are busy asnwering questions. Kind of a chicken or the egg type of thing. In the mean time, I'll just have to post my newbbie questions and depend on the good graces of all you guys to help me out because I know I can't write any of the documentation!

philbailey wrote: ... the issue here, as you have addressed, is that you guys are spending a lot of time answering questions that you wouldn't have to spend the time to do if there was better documentation.

Absolutely! I couldn't agree more. So what are the top five questions that are asked that, by having better documentation, we could refer to and that users would have the confidence of knowing that the information would answer their questions? That's what I would like to know!

Anyone can write documentation. Not all of us can write it "well enough", I suppose, and not all of us are familiar with Wiki mark-up language but that shouldn't be a deterrent. If you have a document that you think would form the basis of a good Wiki article - but you don't know how to convert it into a Wiki article - then let us know or e-mail it to one of the forum moderators and we'll add it into the Wiki for you.

If you'd like to learn a new skill - how to write for Wiki - spend a few moments reading the links under the topic Help .