Fedora website & docs site feedback

[Ian Kelling]

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-Configuring_the_Firewall.html,
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-Configuring_the_Firewall.html,
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/AccountSystem,
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.