[arch-releng] ArchWiki: merge Official and Beginners' Guides? (or change titles)

[Desmond Cox]

In my opinion, there is no reason to keep the official guide on the
wiki: wiki formatting and templates are not utilized, we do not
benefit from the wiki's version control system, and effort is wasted
syncing the wiki with the version in git. Rather, users are confused
and suggest corrections/improvements on the wiki when they should use
this mailing list or the bug tracker.

The easiest change to make towards a better solution, in my opinion,
is to remove the official guide from the wiki and simply link to the
version in AIF git on the Main Page (and www.archlinux.org home page)
and from within the Beginners' Guide itself. Furthermore, the
Beginners' Guide should be renamed because it is misleading; perhaps
Gentoo users would understand the official guide, but even seasoned
Ubuntu veterans would probably learn something from the Beginners'
Guide (please excuse my stereotyping!) "Unofficial Installation Guide"
or "Detailed Installation Guide" or "Installation Walkthrough" would
be more appropriate.

Merging guides, and/or the rationale for maintaining two installation
guides can be discussed in-detail later. (It is unlikely a consensus
will be reached, though... evidenced by the existence of several other
installation guides
(<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Quick_Arch_Linux_Install>;
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_with_Software_RAID_or_LVM>;
and other pages under
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Getting_and_installing_Arch_(English)>).
Can we constrain this discussion to the renaming of the Beginners'
Guide for now?

-- Des

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Jeremiah Dodds
<jeremiah.dodds at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Dario Giovannetti <dariogiova at alice.it>wrote:
>
>> This discussion was started in
>> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide#Change_titles.3F_Official_vs_Beginners.27_Guide_.28formerly_.22Merge_with_Beginners.27_Guide.3F.22.29
>>
>> What do you think of merging the Beginners' Guide and the Official Arch
>> Linux Install Guide into a unified Installation Guide?
>> In my opinion having 2 separate installation guides on the wiki only
>> creates confusion for beginners who wonder why they are directed to an
>> "unofficial" guide, and is of no help for experienced users.
>> This gets reinforced by the fact that the Official Guide is rarely
>> maintained, and almost if not all of its content is already duplicated in
>> the Beginners' Guide.
>> Also, wiki users tend to report bugs in the Official Guide in its talk
>> page, instead of posting to the releng team.
>> I would then link the guide in git from the new unified article.
>>
>> In alternative to all this, I'd propose to change the titles of the two
>> guides to something like "Installation Tutorial" (or Guide) in place of the
>> Beginners', and "Quick installation reference" (or Guide, or Notes) in place
>> of the Official.
>>
>> Dario
>>
>>
>
> +1 from me, people who don't qualify as "beginners" (to linux) will just
> skip over extra information in the guide, and people who are will benefit
> from the simplification.
>