[mythtv-users] Re:MythTV Help Website

[Erwin van der Koogh]

Hi guys,

First let me state that I am completely new to the list (less than a week), 
but that I am a long time open source programmer with a couple of different 
projects and have been using OS for years.
I am struggling to get my own MythTV working, but I am hanging in there for 
a while, because it looks damn promising. I have absolutely nothing against 
anyone here on this list, and I have a lot for the guy(s) that wrote this.

With that out of the way:

>> O M G !!
>> This just further proves the need for a wiki.  Let's see what
>> happened here,
>> shall we ?  Some enlightened souls suggest using a wiki, saying
>> that looking
>> through ML archives and google just isn't very productive nor handy.
>> Someone also remarks that still way too often people are referred
>> to "search
>> the archives, use google" as answers to their questions.
>>
>> ...And lo and behold, what is the answer to "let's install a
>> wiki" ? yep... :(
>
> Well what do you expect? For everyone to just snap to attention and
> reanswer the same question again? Keep in mind that most of the questions
> that get answered here either get answered once, or like 300 times.

I will try not to speak for other people, as it's too dangerous, but I 
think that he is expecting quite the contrary. He seems to be trying to 
suggest a place where people can find stuff before having to ask it for the 
300th time. It seems to be that (at least some) of the developers are 
taking it a bit personal that there is a lack of proper documentation, but 
I think that with a project that's able to run on such diverse hardware 
it's next to impossible to get perfect documentation done.

>> On a personal note, I vote for a wiki. I find that the current
>> docs are indeed
>> lacking, especially more so if:
>> * You're NOT using a PVRx50 card
>> * You're NOT located in the US
>> * You're NOT using one of the featured distributions.
>>
>> I've had enough experience with the above to contribute something;
>> documentation.  And there are better forms than searchable ML archives.

The problem (that I am having at least) is that knowledge is extremely 
spread out. I really did have 60-70 browser windows open with google, 
mailing list archives and there were little tidbits of information, hints, 
stuff to try. What would be invaluable (at least in my case) is the story 
of someone who has a PVR-350 in a pretty standard box and is living in 
Holland. It would be even better if he was using Debian (or even KnoppMyth) 
because that's what I run on all my servers and what I am familiar with.

And I think Wiki is especially suited for that. Users can document an 
entire install with intricate details. Details that wouldn't make sense to 
put in the general documentation. What I am saying is that I think Wiki can 
add quite a bit to the documentation already in place, not to replace it.

> You are making some assumptions here, such as 1) someone will invest the
> time to keep extensive documentation current, 2) people will actually read
> the documentation, etc.

With Wiki, it's the users that are supposed to keep extensive documentation 
current, but with some minimal up-front quality control that would be 
pretty obvious. If everyone clearly states what hardware they used, what 
versions installed, what date it was last updated and maybe a link to a 
generic page with latest info, users can easily see how outdated a document 
is and if it would be relevant.

> But the truth is that people dont read the documentation. 80% of the
> developer posts on this list end up being hyperlinks to places in the docs
> where obvious questions are answered. And there are limits to how
> extensive the documentation can be; just keeping it to a limited set of
> distributions is a task in and of itself, since there are a significant
> number of dependencies for this project. Trying to keep on top of all the
> distributions and all the variations between versions would be a
> nightmare.

Like I said above, I think the flow of the present install document is 
great. It has enough info to get most people up and running and gives a 
good general overview of what's needed. But I think it would be great to 
(next to the present document) have a bunch of accounts of people who have 
gotten it running on their hardware. And have a central place to put it all 
into.

> I urge you to consider your issue from the view of those who are on the
> providing end here. It's nice that you are offering to help, but you have
> to understand that these are empty words until you start providing
> patches.

Maarten hasn't delivered patches, but he did offer to write up stuff. But 
it's a) quite daunting to change other people's stuff and b) it might not 
have a place in the current document.

It would be easier for him (and probably for most users) to write up what 
they did to get MythTV installed on their particular system, with their 
distro and locale.

I have offered to do a writeup on my MythTV installation and I will do that 
and put it on the web somewhere. But I think it would serve the community 
better if there was a central place to store it.

Like I said in the beginning, please don't take any of it personally. This 
is just an observation of someone who doesn't know anyone involved and his 
only experience with MythTV is that he's frantically trying to get it up 
and running because it looks so damn cool.

Erwin