Improve Newbee testing help page experience

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matthiasbasler
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Sep 18, 2016 9:53 am

Improve Newbee testing help page experience

Post by matthiasbasler »

Hi website/wiki maintainers,

driven by my own experiences as new ROS tester and by other forum threads which show similiar issues I suggest following in order to improve the website experience for new people willing to take ROS for a test ride:

There should be a better introduction/landing page for testers which links to all the important information spread over the wiki, the forum and even youtube.

Assume someone is visiting https://reactos.org and needs infos about how to test software with it. Typically the needed information will be (in this order):
  1. What is the current version to be tested?
    -> Currently only announced in the forum? Or found by checking the table at the very bottom of any test page or by checking the list of daily builds? Should be more prominent imho.
  2. How to set up ROS so it runs stable?
    -> https://reactos.org/wiki/Installing_ReactOS, https://www.reactos.org/wiki/User:Matthiasbasler
  3. How to set up an ideal testing/logging environment (which is not the same as the question before)
    -> https://reactos.org/wiki/Testing_Central, https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Testing_Introduction, https://reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox, https://reactos.org/wiki/Debugging, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn4Nu_lm5e0, https://www.reactos.org/wiki/User:Oldman
  4. Where to post the results of my tests
    https://reactos.org/wiki/Tests_for_0.4.9, viewtopic.php?p=131850#p131850, viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10972
  5. How to create good bug reports
    Explained here and this page is, for a change, nicely linked from the home page.
  6. Do's and Don's, aka project specific rules.
    Something like: Please don't edit testing pages after the release, ...
Current status from my perspective:
  • There is a testing landing page (?) on the home page which is rather bare.
  • There a testing FAQ which contains important info but leaves open many basic questions. (Besides, given the usually short answers the used expand widget is imho more distracting than helpful.)
  • The wiki contains multiple good and very good pages about testing (several listed above), but they have to be found and some are somewhat outdated, leading to confusion.
  • Some pages or chapters are very detailed/technical and hence hard to understand for a newbee who is just looking for a step-by-step tutorial (for example https://reactos.org/wiki/Debugging).
  • There is a "Testing Central" landing page, but it is seemingly not linked to by the home page's testing-related pages.
  • There's no stable "latest version under test" link on the testing pages which is kept up-to-date
  • Several questions have been answered in the forum (some of them multiple times)
  • The forum/wiki search are not satisfactory. Ofen you need to know the exact term you are looking for which cannot be expected from newbees. (Plus, you have to search forum and wiki separately.)
Long story short: There's plenty of information, it just needs to be better linked together in order to be found by newcomers and should not be spread between homepage, wiki and forum entries to search for.
Therefore I suggest to collect all needed information on one central testing landing page in the wiki prominently linked to from the home page, and be it just as a collection of links.
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Fraizeraust
Posts: 234
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:46 am
Location: Italy
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Re: Improve Newbee testing help page experience

Post by Fraizeraust »

I think you should open a ticket on JIRA (make sure it is made on ReactOS Online Service and not Core!). Developers barely visit this forum and may not notice this post.
a.k.a. GeoB99 -- ReactOS Kernel developer -- My Wiki page
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matthiasbasler
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Sep 18, 2016 9:53 am

Re: Improve Newbee testing help page experience

Post by matthiasbasler »

I extended my personal wiki page with a suggestion how this could look: ReactOS testing overview and FAQ for beginners.
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