Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Okay, the other thread has descended into something a bit bitter, so let's cut through all that with a straightforward poll.

If people want to see Tablet School (in its present quality-controlled format) brought back as a section of maemo.org, vote for it.

If people want to see the wiki (i.e. wiki.maemo.org) remain the only source of end user guides, vote for it.

If you want something else, vote for it and post what you want in this thread.

(Note that merging tablet school with the wiki is not an option, so please don't vote for "other" and say you want a merger.)

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Why are options one and two mutually exclusive? As I've said before (and will be, evidently, saying again) none of the technical requirements you've outlined are impossible (or, really, even difficult) to implement in the wiki. Yes, if it comes down to it, even the gatekeeping can be provided for.

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

You'd be willing to switch off the "edit" buttons? And have all tutorials approved by moderators before they are published?

If so, what is the point of using the wiki? What advantage does it offer?

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Look, the way things stand, the Downloads page to me looks great. I would love to see Tablet School be laid out exactly like that.

The Wiki page, by contrast, looks awful. I would NOT want to see Tablet School laid out like that.

Could someone explain to me why we couldn't just clone the Downloads section?

There's been talk about what would be possible in theory, but let's look at what actually exists: Downloads looks very user-friendly, wiki does not.

Doesn't it make sense to just use whatever we already have if it works?

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Ok, here's what I think. If the school section is something that only a few people should will have back-end access to, I agree it should not be in a wiki -- maybe a blog system that is made to look like the Downloads section.

But if you can see that one of the school's goal down the road is collect information relating to a video (I think this is what you do over at Tablet School), then you should consider the wiki since you will not have time going back to a video that was created five years ago, adding, changing, deleting those extra information in a closed system.

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

No, I'd be willing to turn off the edit button on the school's index page.

Really, honestly, though, I'm sick and tired of the unending negatative energy directed at the wiki (and, in fact, seemingly everywhere Maemo-related these days) by people who are totally willing to go on endlessly about how crappy and useless it is but totally unwilling to invest the slightest bit of time helping to improve it.

I've said my piece about this for the week. Do what you will.

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I never ever said the Wiki was useless, I said it wasn't suitable for beginners.

The maemo.org wiki is obviously a very great resource for people who are experienced users, and wikis in general are extremely useful in that context (we have a behind-the-scenes wiki on All About Symbian to plan upcoming articles).

I'll tell you what I'll do, hopefully this will keep everyone happy:

I'll do a Maemo School on my own on some totally separate site, using videos like ITS. I'll start it when the next Maemo device comes out.

Those videos will be embeddable by anyone who wants to embed them, including maemo.org.

If you want to use my videos in the wiki and add your own text annotations then you'll be able to do that.

End users can then make up their own mind whether they want to access the videos through my site or the maemo.org wiki.

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Very happy to have your tutorials resume in one way or another. :D :D

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

This is why I voted for the school section to be seperate from the wiki.

To me, the difference between a wiki audience and newbie/ instructional audience is very large, because by necessity a wiki needs to be informative to a very general crowd and thus a higher level user than a "tablet newbie." No matter how basic its target audience is, in order to remain relevant to its general community, any tablet wiki will eventually get far more technical than a newbie crowd can (or should) be exposed to. You really are talking about two different audiences here, since -- if that wiki is going to be useful to newbie users -- then it will have all the mid- and advanced level information excised and banished to another place.

But that banishing is not what will happen, as mid- and advanced users eventually take things like "become root" for granted and will put that into the newbie wiki, forgetting how "become root" and "red pill mode" sounds like gibberish to a less advanced user/ newbie. So you're talking about two different wikis: a newbie/ instructional wiki and a community information repository wiki. They're not really compatible, especially since everything I've seen referring to the next device(s), Nokia intends for it to be more consumer-polished than the 770 or N8x0s, and so we'll be getting many more community members who have no idea -- and don't care or ever want to know -- what this "root" thing is, never mind knowing the difference between "gainroot vs. become root." This expected wave of willingly-permanently-less-advanced users, (perma-newbies sounds like a slap), will just end up asking in the general forum.

Best stated by mobiledivide in another post:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...5&postcount=45

These are not stupid people, they just don't know much about the technical guts stuff, have no use for it, and never will. Why make them wade through techno-babble? Should they really be walled off into a section called "newbie wiki" merely because they don't care about linux kernels and gaining root via xterm and omgwhatinheckis red pill mode? ;)

In reference to the suggestion of embedding or linking to instructional vids inside the wiki: merely embedding the videos/ links to into a wiki would just make newbies (or these expected newer/ shallower users) shy away and probably never enter into that part of the wiki which would be most useful for them, since they're wading through "gainroot" vs. "become root" vs. "red pill mode," etc., and because they'd have to wade through a lot of useless (to them) information to get to those video or link to the videos, eventually their eyes will glaze over and they'd just wade to something else, (or ask in the forum for the 1,883rd time).

Putting them in the wiki would, in essence, "hide" the exact help that newbies need.

When I got my tablet, thanks to tabletschool I went from "where's the ON switch?" to full useability (for what I wanted from the tablet at that time), -- and more -- in two days. My linux was rusty and I was able to get over the initial tablet-ownership hump and use the tablet for virtually everything I wanted to do before I had to refresh my linux memory. I remember thinking that this was just the way it should be for every device, and regret now not donating while possible at the time because all the time, thought and work put into that deserves reward. So though this is the wrong place, I'd like to thank Krisse for all the help he or she did me.



Joe

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I voted on a separate section within maemo.org because i believe in a completely video based tutorial that is aimed at casual users and moderated by one person (Krisse). Krisse my offer to help shooting and editing videos still stands even if it is on another site.

@GA I have never believed in using the wiki for tutorial purposes so that is why I don't volunteer to help fix it. I think Krisse is offering the best idea and I have sent many confused tablet users to tabletschool.blogspot.com because I know they will understand her videos better than getting information from other places.

As you should know I am a vocal supporter of many things maemo as well as many things Nokia and support and appreciate all of the work you do for the community. Complaining about negative energy (I assume this is focused at me) is not going to guilt anyone into doing anything for you especially when you continue to take such a combative tone. Once again thanks for your contribution :) Happy Saturday!

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

And, for the billionth time, no-one is suggesting that Maemo School shouldn't look like downloads!

All you are doing with this confrontation over the technical details is dissuading many of the people with the skills to help you deliver your requirements quickly from helping you. Hell, if you'd done as I suggested, and concentrated on coming to a consensus on your functional requirements, the first version could have been up and running this weekend. In a few hours.

• Because it's geared towards downloading applications, not embedding videos.
• Because there's none of the workflow - nor the scope for it - that you want to ensure high quality tutorials which are well categorised.
• Because it doesn't meet the desire that other people have that there's the option of a plain text transcription of the video, improvable and correctable by anyone (including its hiding if it's rubbish and written for the wrong level of user).
• Because it's a midgard module and the number of people able to, or willing to, write or amend another is very very small.

We can make the wiki look like however you want: it's just images, layout and feeds. We can put any arbitrary HTML we like in the wiki, we can pull in RSS feeds and process them.

Quality control can be done by you, or a team, monitoring what gets put in "Category:Maemo School". If all the info for the index page is being sourced from a YouTube channel you control, doesn't that mean you completely control what appears? (I don't believe anyone can post a video to your YouTube channel).

If you're worried about people having to navigate through maemo.org to "Community" and then "Wiki", and then the wiki to a page labelled in little letters "Maemo School", then no-one is suggesting that either!

I think Maemo School is a fantastic idea. I think have good quality videos/screencasts is wonderful (although I like having the option of people transcribing them for those without the time/ability to watch a whole video - and to scan it to see if it delivers what they're trying to do). I think having a committed team of people ensuring the quality remains high is spot on.

I also think it'd be accessed by adding a "School" entry alongside "Intro", "Downloads", "Community", "Development", "News" and "Talk"; no matter what technology enables it.

Downloads works and looks great for downloads. It's a great source of inspiration for the site you want. But it doesn't "work" for your use-case, as I outline above.

Re: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

This is all academic as I'll do the site elsewhere, but...


1. It currently handles downloads, but the same format would IMHO be just as suitable for tutorials.

2. I don't know what you mean by "there's none of the workflow". Do you mean people wouldn't be able to publish instantly? Of course they wouldn't, that's the point.

3. I do not want to open up tutorials to be edited by all-comers. All-comers can submit stuff, but they should not be able to publish.

4. All I'm asking is the current module to be cloned and VERY small changes to be made (really just renaming the categories and replacing some of the page titles). If even that's not possible then forget I even mentioned the downloads option.


...but all viewers should be able to edit it?

If so, I'm not getting involved. I will not take part in a beginner's guide that allows everyone to edit, because that will almost certainly make the content unsuitable for beginners.

It's not just a problem of incompetent contributors, but disagreements between competent contributors over what is suitable for beginners and what isn't. Remember all those disagreements on ITT and across the Linux community about the ease of using command lines for example? Imagine stuff like that going on all the time...

Every group-driven process I've been involved in here on maemo.org has descended into bitter spats over nothing, usually because people have different ideas about what is acceptable to end users without technical knowledge. I'd expect them to continue if a beginner's guide had editing open to everyone.

I know some people would like wikis to take over from tightly-edited publications, but in the case of tutorials aimed at technophobes wikis are not a good way of doing things.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Fully agree.

In the past Krisse came up alone with Tablet School and everybody gratulate her. Now she tries to evolve that project (that was video centric sinc the beginning) within maemo.org and she is facing this stop energy from people that (perhaps I'm wrong) won't be there creating videos themselves.

Krisse won the trust with Tablet School, why not let her drive whatever she thinks is best with tablet.maemo.org? The alternative is she creating a school somewhere else.

About using the schema of Downlads yes makes sense in the mid run, but before you need around 20 videos in place. Otherwise a simple list will do.

My suggestion: start creating videos with CC license allowing modifications and brand them with maemo.org only at the beginning/end. This way they can stay the way they are or someone can come up with the modifications s/he likes. Once they are unmanageable in a single list then go for mor complex formats.

But wait... in order to start you need Maemo 5 final. And perhaps even Maemo 5 users... Nothing of this exists yet. So aren't you perhaps arguing too soon? :)

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

It takes a lot of skill and experience to make a good beginners tutorial.
( Just remember all those user manuals you have sworn over...)

Krisse is certainly right,
some topics, especially for beginners, are better taught by video than by text,
and it takes some time to learn to make a good video.
(I don't mean technically, but e.g. in the timing of events.)

Of course,
in some cases explaining texts are needed even if there is a good video.

Krisse is right,
a collection of beginners tutorials (whether text or video) need to be supervised and organised by someone/people with teaching experience.
And beginners should not have to search inside a wiki of more advanced and hardly understood information.

Now, should maemo.org include some tablet schooling ?
I think it should.
It would, I think, be a good investment for the start of a future growth of developing manpower.

My vote: Yes!

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I think this is a great idea, but from reading this thread, I don't see why the wiki is a problem.

• Permissions could be changed to only allow certain people to edit
• The main "Maemo school" page could be linked to anywhere
• Adding new videos is as simple as adding a page
• The "discussion" pages in the wiki would allow for giving feedback on videos/asking questions

Having dealt with adding an application to the downloads section, I really don't think it's what you're looking for. It is very specific to downloading applications for a certain platform. Tweaking would need to be done, which makes the wiki the easier option.

I think starting with the wiki would be a good idea, as it is very simple to implement. If the time comes that the wiki gets hard to manage, the videos could be moved over to a different backend in the future.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I agree with what qgil said above. All of us are just talking the talk, but Krisse was the one who actually did the TabletSchool and got it right. Let her set it up the way she wants it. She's proved that she gets it right, several times over.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I strongly think that Tablet School should be part of maemo.org and have the very same look and feel.

UPDATE: well forget what's written here, it's only a series of video that will be put online, no transcripts. I'll first bried myself on the issue, then I'll write again :)
==================

It'll be a list of pages with videos and text transcriptions as usual. I also don't see (of haven't read carefully enough all the thread) why a series of Wiki pages won't do the job. As far as I see them, they're tabula rasa pages where one can put and organize the stuff the way she wants.
There would be, I assume, a front page (tablet.maemo.org, I think, right?) linsting and linking to all the video tutorial pages each of them with they own format, but same look&feel.

What am I missing ?

Perhaps this would need a lot of manual work from Krisse, as she would need to manually modify the wiki page (the front one) as soon as a new video is ready and, as quim suggested, this list can get difficult to handle when there will be more videos coming.

I don't know how the "Downloads" page works, but can this new "wiki front page" be automatically re-created/updated with new videos automatically somehow, of course with ease ?
Can, at least, Krisse create her own pages with Maemo.org style and have a link from tablet.maemo.org pointing there?

What's the difficulty of adapting the "Downloads" pages to better handle video tutorial pages?

Plenty of questions :) but I'd like to get an idea of the work involved in all the options to make this happen.

Aniello

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

To me, the school is more intuitive for new users. I begin to flash my N810 first time following the instruction in the tablet school. There are videos tell you how to find the correct buttons in the home page, and then which next button, ..., and so on. But after understanding how to basically use the tablet, I try other new ideas such as partitioning memory card and adding new OS alternatives following wiki and threads in forum. However, I will still prefer to vivid video tutorials for these issues if there are so.

So if possible, may we provide some vivid animation or video tutorials for those first-time-user as tablet school does? I think some links to Youtube pages may be even enough.

This is my two cents option. Thanks.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

ohhh, now I am more concerned why the tablet school was closed!?:cool:
I admit wiki is good but how many people are really spending some time to write an easy-to-follow context-based guide in wiki. Sometimes I was just linked to some thread in forum by wiki. Also I don't think a causal user with less Linux experience can have much patience to go through the full page text description. Then the only end-up is to resell the useless toy to someone else. (I just bought mine from someone not interested in Linux. He only treated it as another difficult-to-use mixer of mp3/pda).

To Krisse,
I really like the tablet school idea facing to newbies. You don't need to concern whether it should bound to meamo.org since most of us here are not first-time users. So you should resume the school so that other newbies can find intuitive and vivid tutorials. After understanding how to basically use it, they can find here by Google if they want to try some complicated ideas, just like me. DIFFERENT GUIDES IN DIFFERENT STAGES.:p

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

I want tutorials (Video and Web and/or PDF) , but also something like "toptwenty", a set of best-things-you-can-do with a NIT. Kind of "pearl"-specific tutorials.
I also believe that making content for some apps more readily available might help, too (Creative Commons stuff etc). I really like e.g. how Canola comes prepopulated or how the NITS include some images and music out of the box. This principle shoudl be extended, at least for content-related "pearls" or similar.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

There is a section named "Tablet 101", and there are some tutorials. Why not enrich that section by previous ITS video tutorials? My point is, whatever it called, Internet Tablet School or Tablet 101 or Tablet ABC, etc., good easy-to-follow vivid instruction makes sense.

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

There aren't enough people interested enough in changing wiki content for "permissions" to even be an issue (seriously, it's hard enough for us to get content added, let alone worrying about people changing it).

As stated, I agree that the wiki is the best place to do this.

But, I also agree with Quim and would love to just see Krisse start -- anywhere she pleases.

Krisse: You can speak with Niels (X-Fade) about making this happen.

Tim

Re: Poll: Do you want to see Tablet School brought back as a section on maemo.org?
 

Actually, this won't exist for much longer since itT is now integrated into maemo.org as talk.maemo.org. A new section (somewhere) is required.

Tim