On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 01:45 +0100, Ivan Leo Puoti wrote:
My opinion is that no third party tools/web sites should be needed, at least not for basic stuff. Anybody that posts to a wiki can also add a comment to appdb, or become a maintainer.
Ivan.
Frankly it means it's a bit too hard if people choose not to. If people are posting useful information in a wiki or user forums, it means they find it easier to do so.
And people post a LOT in user forums. Unfortunately, they're forums most of us don't see: The Linux gaming forums, the Ubuntu forums, the Something Awful forums - all have the occasional Wine post from a user who can't seem to find the right place to ask for help, since the IRC channel and mailing list just don't quite cut it.
I was one of those users once too. Seriously, we need to make finding help at Wine's page easier. The AppDB stuff is pretty essential, and making it more functional and usable has been a great thing, but we can do more, since people aren't using it.
The interface in AppDB for posting might be a little too cryptic or difficult. Maybe the registration requirement is pushing user's away to the Wiki. Maybe it's hard to find AppDB on the main Wine page (it is just that small little link "applications", afterall, which doesn't say much about anything.) Maybe AppDB's bizarre front page is pushing them away. Maybe it's hard to find the app you need. Maybe it's not clear how easy it is to be a maintainer, or what they do.
I'd like to thank the AppDB hackers a lot, though. It's come a long way rather fast. I'd like to make some changes to make it more readable myself, though, such as cleaning up the front page. But even I got scared away by the lack of template files. Maybe we can start polishing off that todo file :)
Thanks, Scott Ritchie