this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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There is FOSS alternatives out there like Revolt or just plain old IRC which is good enough imo. The Discord bullshit is so annoying.
That's not the point. The point is that pointing to Discord means that there simply is no documentation.
I meant it more as a communication platform, not nescessarily for hosting documentation. Either way, using a forum is still pretty good alternative
All chat programs are shit for long term accumulation of knowledge. Discord, revolt, IRC, they're all just as bad for it.
Forums are where you'll find people who are actual experts discussing because they want to be able to easily reference previous posts by other people.
Where's lemmy in regards to this?
Lemmy/Reddit style platforms are good at generating short term discussions, it's threaded chats.
The main features that makes forums the best to accumulate knowledge is bumping and linear discussions. There's only one discussion that everyone is following if they want to talk about a specific subject, the knowledge on that subject is centralized and keeps accumulating instead of requiring to be constantly repeated because the previous thread is lost to time. The linear discussion means you don't have to go back up and start reading a different branch to know what some other people are talking about (which often times leads to having many people basically saying the same thing without realizing it), all new replies appear in chronological order and people quote others to provide context when necessary.
Look on old school forums for more "boomer hobbies" and it's ridiculous how long conversations can keep going. I provided a link in another reply but the Yamaha WR250 thread on ADVRider has 428k replies since 2013, all that is possible to know about this motorcycle is in they thread and pretty much any question you might have will have its reply in there. There's car forums with discussions that have been ongoing for decadeS!
Meanwhile on Reddit of you want to ask a question in a thread that was started 24h ago you're shit out of luck, no one but the OP will know about it. On Lemmy? Everyone sorts by top 6 hours.
In regards to the advrider comment, I don't find those ridiculously long-running threads all that convenient even though they are very useful. In your example the WR250R thread could have multiple subtopics being discussed at once in the same thread which I find frustrating.
For example, one guy might ask about tires and while that's being discussed another guy shows up asking about a big bore kit to make more power. Now there are two discussions happening at the same time and all I can do is view the thread chronologically. Then someone else shows up asking what oil everyone uses. Then someone new joins and says "Hey it's not possible to go back and read through all 2300 pages in this thread, what GPS are you all using?"
Like sure it's great that all the information is in that one thread but navigating through it only in chronological order can be super frustrating.
ADVRider is more of a "motorcycles in general" community and they try to limit the number of "subcommunities" (the Wr250 thread is in the Thumpers subcommunity), but a WR250 specific forum would have the discussions you're talking about split up.
The real solution though would be for a "Reddit style forum" to exist, where people can create new subcommunities however they want but to have it work like a forum instead of having threaded discussions that don't get bumped.
It actually drives me a little nuts that the 500 EXC-F thread is under Thumpers and not under Orange Crush. I get that it's a Thumper, but it's also a KTM. Why have a subcommunity based on engine type when all of the other engine types are in manufacturer-specific subcommunities?
I honestly don't know why they decided to divide it this way and as you say it would make much more sense to split it by manufacturers and that's it, maybe it started with Thumpers and Others and as more and more manufacturers started making ADV motorcycles with other types of engines the "others" section became too crowded? 🤔
we just need IRCv2 which should add chat history
How do you replicate a conversation like this in a IRC format?
https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/yamaha-wr250r-threadfest.936588/
IRC at least you have text logs, but I agree.
I only want the documentation if you have to fax it to me
Whatever, Mr. Stallman.
I have been playing with the idea of a documentation.org. Something publicly funded (mostly through corporate and individual donations) that hosts technical manuals, white papers, guides, links to video tutorials (likely YouTube), FAQs, and even links to Discord and/or forums if they exist. Documents are public, free to index (no login to view), version controlled and held in perpetuity.
Obviously there is much more to it, but I think we have reached a point where something like it is required.
Also I'd rather just have these things in the repository.
Aren't you basically describing readthedocs.io?
In the most technical terms, yes. The idea is not new or bizarre, but I see the same missteps repeated. For starters, the venture HAS to be a nonprofit with zero need for monetization. It will also need an inviting and easy to navigate user interface, accessible to the most nontechnical of users. You need to have a massive document library from multiple large players from day one, so you need to have a lot of contacts.
As I said it's not fully cooked, but I have spoken to a few people that could help me make it happen and they seemed open to it.
Please consider a Patreon for doc review. I don't mean reviewing the doc against the project for fitness, as that's the job of each project to maintain and review their own docs; I mean by a technical writer who can de-localize (you only think I mean 'internationalize') the document and make it syntactically and logically correct against a generic, classic style guide.
The rising popularity of really bad errors is definitely turning me off from videos or documentation from a few sources with a lot of churn. It ruins the flow and it robs the assumption of authority which I'd argue is an important part of any documentation.
That is a good idea. I am fairly certain I could get funding and/or loaned resource time for English, Spanish, French and German, but crowd funding incentivized localization for other regions is brilliant.
First thing that comes to mind is https://devdocs.io/about