+Fedora-docs list

Ian,

Your experience is a lot of the motivation behind the work the fedora-docs folks are doing to fix onboarding, editing, and building of docs. Unfortunately it is slow work, but it is important. If you'd like to help, please join us on the docs list (docs@lists.fedoraproject.org) and at our IRC meetings on Mondays from 14:00:00 to 15:00:00 UTC at fedora-meeting@irc.freenode.net .

regards,

bex

On Aug 31, 2015, at 4:37 AM, Ian Kelling ian@iankelling.org wrote:

I've tried fedora a few times over the years. I recently met Remy (fedora community lead) at oscon and he convinced me to give it another try and give some feedback. This is meant to be constructive, just my impression, I could be missing things.

I google "fedora firewall", because I'd like to learn generally about it, how to do a few common things like opening a port, or forwarding something. I see links to official fedora docs. So I think, yes, lets rtfm!

link 2: 2.8.2. Basic Firewall Configuration - Fedora Documentation https://docs.fedoraproject.org/.../Fedora/.../sect-Security_Guide-Firewalls...

(click link, it's fedora 11 doc)

link 3: 3.8.13. Configuring the Firewall - Fedora Documentation https://docs.fedoraproject.org/.../Fedora/.../sec-Configuring_the_Firewall....

(click link, it's fedora 19 doc)

link 4: 3.8.9. Disabling firewalld - Fedora Documentation https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en.../Fedora/.../sec-Disabling_firewalld.htm...

(click link, it's fedora 20 doc)

link 6: 16.7. Firewall Configuration - Fedora Documentation docs.fedoraproject.org/.../Fedora/.../s1-redhat-config-kickstart-firewall.ht...

(click link, its fedora 20 doc)

So... now I really want to know if fedora 22 doc has a section on firewall.

I see the url's all look like this: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Security_Guide/sec-Confi..., so I try changing the 19 to 22, but it takes me to https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/index.html.

So then I look for a search feature. I don't see one. So then I expand the fedora 22 drop down, and I see 7 high level categories with no obvious right place, so now I'm fairly confused as to how to find stuff.

So I search firewall on google site:https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/22. And the closest thing I see is the #1 link, 14.15. Configure the Firewall to Allow Incoming NTP Packets. But I'm wondering if there is a general section like link 2 or link 3 from the original google search, so I click around some more, I figure there are 4 of the 7 sections in the sidebar which could cover firewall: installation guide, networking guide, selinux users and administrators guide, and system administrators guide. So I click on administrators guide, (and I'm slightly surprised to find a comprehensive table of contents, as the ui design of left menu sort of implied that it was THE table of contents, not that there was more useful list of sections within. Why couldn't I see those things in the expandable menu?). I do a word search, find the ntp related link I saw before, repeat for the other 3 sections, find one in the installation section which looks generic, only learn that installation has a limited set of firewall configuration options and this is not what I'm looking for. So I'm deciding there is no general firewall documentation for 22.

So now I look back at the best link I originally found, https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/19/html/Security_Guide/sec-Confi..., and I think, yes, I'm confirming my original impression that this is really the kind of documentation I was looking for, but I'm really confused and frustrated: does any of this still apply? did they abandon firewall-config? What's the story?

I've had this same experience several times with fedora, and at this point I've mostly given up frustrated and annoyed.

Once, when I was feeling a bit more ambitious, I thought. Hmm, maybe I can help out on docs, cuz I have noticed the new links like "click to contribute to fedora!" So click through, quickly get to this page:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_Docs_Project

Well, after 15 minutes of reading lots of stuff I'm not interested in, I can't find the source code to the fedora 22 official docs, or anything about how to improve them, and I think, I'd have gotten way more done by just going to the arch wiki firewall page, and I could have just hit edit and improved the thing.

Suggestions: make previous fedora version documentation link to the relevant current documentation because google links to old docs are the reality for most fedora searches, or if there is no newer, say that, and say whether this is still relevant to newer distros. And port documentation forward, it seems there is lots of good documentation sections which only exist for older fedora versions. Make contributing to the official docs possible in some short amount of time. Make a search feature (this is 2015), even if it's just to some 3rd party search engine (google site search gave me good results).

Oh, and how about filing a bug? First google link: "How to file a bug report - FedoraProject" https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report It's like a horribly bad novel when I wanted a tldr for any reader who's filed bugs before for free software projects and wants to file one for fedora:

Up top, "Documentation Summary:", doesn't try whatsoever to summarize "how to file a bug report", but just talks about meta things about the document, complete waste of my time.

1st section after the fake summary: "How to File a Bug Report", first sentence: "This page describes a procedure for reporting software bugs to Fedora developers." Well, I'm not a fedora developer, so this isn't for me? Well, I don't see any other way to file a bug sooo, does fedora accept bug reports from it's users? And it's redundant, making it just bad quality writing, leaving a bad impression, and making me think no one actually reads or improves this page. Significant chunk of new users are giving up at this

Ok, this is a wiki, so let's try and edit this page. Click log in, which leads to this page this page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Account_System?rd=Infrastructure/AccountSyste..., which is a novel length page which as far as I can see does not actually lead to getting a wiki account! No wonder no one edited the page, creating a wiki account if a total nightmare! Suggestion: fix that.

Ok, flash back to the filing a bug wiki page. Next sentence: 'A bug is defined as "an error, flaw"'..., am I doing a homework assigment? This document is called "how to file a bug report", not spend an hour reading wikipedia. Ok, next sentence says this is about https://bugzilla.redhat.com/, let's skip to the chase and try using that, because the rest of this document looks pretty useless.

Go there, and see from the 1st sentence.: "Thank you for visiting Red Hat Bugzilla. Red Hat Bugzilla is the Red Hat bug-tracking system and is used to submit and review defects that have been found in Red Hat distributions." Ok, so am I at the wrong place? This is confusing. Is fedora a "a red hat distribution"? I skim a bit more... "If you are a Fedora Project user and require assistance, please consider using one of the mailing lists we host for the Fedora Project. " Well, I'm filing a bug to get "assistance" in it being fixed, so it seems I should post it on the mailing list instead?

So, wondering if fedora is a red hat distribution, I remember that there is a link on the main fedora page "Learn more about the relationship between Red Hat and Fedora »." So I go there. It's not very helpful, its not well written to stand on it's own. The first section goes like this "jill makes pizza for anyone. John makes pizza for big companies. People go to jill in order to collaborate with john. Businesses love john's pizza. The end. (notice a gaping hole? Why would someone go to john in order to collaborate with jill? And tt's pretty relevant title of the page.). Anyways, this one is a minor gripe compared to the rest, but my suggestion is to replace it with a higher quality fedora domain page, which includes a link to the red hat page. -- websites mailing list websites@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/websites