S2 Idiot's Guide

[kunzite1]

face it. we need one.

here is an lj_userdoc post that i made a while back.
here is my component idiot's guide

Comments

[darkladyothsith]

Are you looking for something more like a FAQ or like a user's manual similar to the s2 user's guide, just with more info and updated more often?

And what medium? An HTML page/set of pages stored on LJ like the s2 guide and the FAQ files, or an LJ community that has limited posting access for updates, or an LJ user designed spefically for the purpose? Or would it be on a different site entirely?

[kunzite1]

i was thinking maybe something like s2howto or something like that.

something that us, the users, can maintain because the big guys don't seem to have time for it.

it bugs me to no end when i have to always tell people to do the layerinfo "source_viewable" = 1; thing and stuff. yes, it's in the faq, but those faqs have a bunch of other stuff in it too.

one page that has the source_viewable thing, another that explains the is_public thing, another that says we need to know the information abou the entire style (all the layers hooked up to it) because one layer's function will override another.

i just need ideas i guess. yeah.

i think i'd like faq-style over manual-style. the s2 manual sucks. and is outdated.
with the faq, i'd like it to be cut-and-dry. you need to make it viewable? here's the code.

lj comm with limited posting access would be the best idea i think. then a comm for maintainers to play in to talk about new documents, etc.

kinda like howto_userdoc and s2howto work.

[jc]

I resent the implication that we "don't seem to have time for it". I see the need for an S2 layer troubleshooting FAQ, and I have a few ideas regarding how it could be presented: I'd just hate to see it turn into a gigantic page comprising mostly of trivia. The balance just needs to be found as to what constitutes as TMI, and what information would benefit the majority of users.

[kunzite1]

very true. my fault. what i meant by "don't seem to have time for it" are the lj devs who seem to not being doing much in the user's point of view.
i'm pretty sure that they're doing lots of behind the scenes work, but with all the new s2 layouts (complete with bugs) that have gone live, and people asking questions about how to fix these bugs, gets kind of annoying after a while.
and it's also true that i can choose not to help these people, but it gives me something to do with my large amounts of free time.

your work and the rest of the userdoc admins and faq editors is really well done. the language used in the faqs and other areas are usually well-written. much better than i can ever do (as i'm sure you've observed).

i agree that the "logic statments" bit that we went over in lj_userdoc is a little out there. i just see that there's a lot of fluff in the faq talking about source_viewable and is_public. but that's just me

[jc]

Don't worry about it, your frustration with the system is apparent but understandable and your intentions are honourable.

I believe that there's a (somewhat) concerted effort going on behind the scenes to overhaul the support and especially the documentation system into something that could accommodate tutorials alongside FAQ-type question-and-answer pages. I'm not holding my breath, but we work with the tools we have and with the introduction of HTML into the FAQ system comes the potential to present longer FAQs broken up into anchored sections, perfect for an FAQ of this kind.

If you find yourself repeating answers to common questions a lot, could that energy not be better spent reporting bugs to developers (via bugzilla) or reporting common questions and their answers to lj_userdoc? I'd bet that given twenty minutes of going through previous posts you'd have no trouble coming up with the top ten troubleshooting queries, which could easily be hacked together into a coherent FAQ; then it'd just be a matter of throwing the FAQ at people.

[kunzite1]

thanks for understanding.

most of the main issues are included in the lj_userdoc post that i posted earlier. i think.

here are some main ones:
we need the style information. the s2id number, layout layer name/number, user layer number, and theme layer number.
we all need all of these to be source_viewablethen a list of alterations to make

[darkladyothsith]

How big is this likely to get? Just a couple of posts, more than 20? more than 100? more than 1000?

[kunzite1]

i'm thinking just a couple basic ones.
style information that we need and how to get it.
how to make your layers viewable.
how to make your layers public.
common compiler issues (as jc pointed out in the lj_userdoc post).

stuff like that.

still awaiting more discussion. might want to check out the other comments.

[kunzite1]

oh. you did read the other comments. forgot where that comment was in the page.
don't mind me. *wanders off*

[darkladyothsith]

*grin*

I think I'll wait and see if anyone else chooses to comment, though.