I have a mixed feeling about it.
The official manual even thou is helpful seems is not very current. The information and tutorial is fragmented and tutorial none existent( at least I never found one ). Thus new users struggle to find a reliable source of information. At the beginning, when I started to use darktable I relied on YT. It was a try and error method. Not knowing which one is correct and which one is not.
In this regard, I welcomed this centralized source of ‘how to’ and tutorial and I think initially was welcomed by me and other members and some actually helped it to take off the ground.
However, I do agree with @kofa that the forum and ‘PlayRaw’ does undo what the project initially intend it to do and does indeed fragment the information source for the darktable. If the forum part of it instead become a link to this forum it will provide more powerful knowledge source for dt and frankly more support from very extremely talented and knowledgable members. After all these members are the people who developed and created the dt. It also relieve the time and effort that needs to maintain a forum.
First of all: I still love pixls.us. It is a fantastic community with incredible depth of knowledge.
It’s not about what you did ‘wrong’, but about the specific experience of being a beginner. I was in that position myself just a few months ago. It wasn’t easy. When I asked questions, the standard answer was often ‘Read the manual’. I did read the manual, but often I didn’t even know the right terminology to search for.
Also, discussions here can sometimes turn into intense technical debates. While that is valuable for the software, it can be intimidating for newcomers.
That is why I started darktable.info. It quickly grew from a solo idea into a ‘we’ with several contributors. We simply want to be the place I wished I had back then: A place where ‘Read the manual’ is never the only answer.
We don’t see ourselves as competition, but as a complement. Ultimately, the goal is for people to enjoy using Darktable and stick with it. Does it really matter where they get the help that makes it click for them? Especially in the FOSS world, having choices is something we all appreciate. We are simply offering another option.
Chris
When I read your post @paperdigits I was puzzled at first. Then I saw how the darktable.info site recently developed. And now I must say, that I’m indeed more puzzled and also somehow sad, because as @kofa said - yes, that site now evolves into a direction, that I find per se somehow splitting.
The goal that @Qor claimed here was a valuable starting point for new darktable users. I really appreciate the invest that he and others, and quite a lot of members of this community here did to launch that site and to improve the content so quickly. I also think, that such an entry point is indeed very helpful for new users (see posts above related to the manuals, etc.).
But I really would like to strongly recommend not duplicating pixls.us there and support @siamak’s suggestion by just linking e.g. the forum from darktable.info to pixl.us but to avoid fragmentation of topics and people by hosting a parallel forum over there. Why? I’m pretty sure that people exchanging in one forum won’t do their exchange in two such forums. From my point of view this would automatically introduce loss. If anything is missing in this forum here, well let’s improve that…
Of course, it’s up to you @Qor, it’s FOSS, you may launch or fork somehow anything. But I really hope, that you think over your decision.
And now - have a good time all of you, take care.
I hope that this is normally an exhortation to read the manual “first” (and search the forum second) so that those people (they do exist) who are happy to help, can concentrate on answering new questions rather than repeating answers to questions that have been asked (often many times) before.
People are willing to give their time to help beginners, but they do like you (by which I mean the beginner asking the question) to give some of your time trying to solve the problem yourself first and understandably get irritated when you ask a question instead of trying to search for the answer yourself (let me google that for you…). I’d like to think that any post that starts “I’ve tried searching the user manual and I’m still stuck” will be treated more kindly. Yes “have you looked at the manual” is the first question asked but I honestly don’t think that’s a bad thing. Teach a man how to fish and everything.
Just some P.S. to my last post and seconding @elstoc here…
This “pointing to the manual” could also be a pinned post in this forum now, perhaps something as follows:
- Howdy, still new to darktable and somehow overwhelmed? Try out our “learning to walk” tutorials at darktable.info
- There is always the technical reference manual
- Still puzzled, something not clear, need assistance or other’s point of view? Why not join-in to our community? Feel welcomed, post your post and join the conversation
…or similar…
And of course, if you’ve read the manual and it wasn’t clear, once you’ve been helped you can contribute back to the project by suggesting changes to the manual that would have made it easier for you to understand in the first place.
This is hard to believe when you’ve out right duplicated things like Play Raws and have showcase, critique, and other categories that really have nothing to do with being a beginner.
The project has a finite amount of people willing to put in time and effort to maintain things. Putting up another place to do the same activity arguably divides that finite resource even further.
You’ll notice that the people who help others with darktable consistently is probably about ~10 or so. You see them here, you see them on reddit, facebook, etc etc. There aren’t a lot of us.
If it really didn’t matter, as you imply, then why wouldn’t you put your time and effort into bettering the existing things? Because it does matter.
If the choice offers two good alternatives, then yes.
Best of luck to you. Longevity is hard. I’ve been here almost every day for over 10 years.
Before we created the forum, we had the idea of linking to pixls.us. We considered how our ideas/opinions would fit in here.
At that point, we already had some experience with the reactions here regarding darktable.info, so we rejected the idea. We didn’t dare to ask.
Why? Because opinions on how to deal with beginners differ and people here are (very) annoyed by the same questions. We simply didn’t see any way to get our ideas and opinions across. This is not a criticism of pixls.us, but rather the situation as it presented itself to us. This is a great community with wonderful people, but nothing is perfect 
That doesn’t bother us; we want to help beginners, even if they ask the same question 1000 times. Incidentally, for us, that’s a warning sign; it may mean that our site doesn’t cover a topic well or that it couldn’t be found.
We don’t see ourselves as a counter-movement; we’re simply not that. Just as we link to the DT manual, we also link to pixls.us.
Because it’s incredibly difficult here change something, and that’s not just my experience. Everyone on our team has already tried and failed in different ways. There are lots of ideas for improvement here by numerous other people, but most of them are seen as “attacks”. We don’t see it as our “job” to change that; we want to use our time and energy more wisely.
Time will tell. We are a small project and are trying to do it in a way that we believe is easier for beginners. That still has to be proven.
Thank you. All of us on the “team” are (still) loyal fans of pixls.us and appreciate and respect everyone, whether they are developers, supporters, or the many others who put their heart and soul into darktable. You won’t get rid of us here either
Best regards, Chris
P.S: If you like, we can continue our conversation via private message.
@darix I hope the text above answers your question from Reddit. If you are interested in the details of my/our problems, then I think a private message is a good way to go. Best regards, Chris
I’d rather do it in the open, if there is anything further to say.
Hm, which question on reddit are you referring to? I find it a little strange to somehow side-pipe information without context here and at the same time request a DM from the addressee, i.e. hiding further information from the community. So why don’t you just DM darix instead of posting this half-Information here? scratching my head
Should change be easy? If I had a nickel for every person who told me they were going to rewrite the documentation from scratch or reorganize it or do some other radical change, I wouldn’t be rich but I’d have a large back of nickels.
I don’t think “we” could do any better in “your” position. We can only guess what it means to work on such a large project. Over the past few weeks, I have repeatedly asked myself how you manage to do it all. I have great respect for you.
As I said, we are a small project, we can deal with things differently and have less to consider. So we have it much easier.
- I think we must accept (for now) that discuss.pixls.us might be not the best place for newbies. There might be various reasons for that, dt might need better newbie-FAQs, long-years users might not be willing to repeat the same things again, people that don’t read might not know why even RTFM
- darktable is definitely not perfect for newbies. we certainly don’t want it to be dumbtable but can we do things better to get into an easier start?
Above are things we might want to discuss here on pixls or as darktable devs.
Just mentioning: Even if the disclaimer correctly says it’s a user-driven-site (or alike), the logo and the “info” might be understood otherwise, more official maybe, making me feel a bit uneasy. Even on pixls.us with many long-time users we have a fair amount of bad/incorrect suggestions (some have been very bad and some even dangerous) - don’t know how that will work out on a site clearly aimed for newbies.
No, we should not accept that. We should work to improve instead of forming into a completely separate space.
That being said, I don’t think we will stop advising people to read the manual. Its a rich resource and should be the first place people look before asking questions. That saves everyone time and effort.
Thank you for your contribution and response.
We will of course try to avoid such errors and the contributions will be checked several times. We will probably not be able to avoid them completely, but we will try our best.
What can we do to improve this? Is it about the colour version we chose for the forum? I would be happy to find a common solution that suits us all.
We currently have over 20 pages in English that refer to the manual. We do this wherever possible and appropriate, and we also do it for the other languages. We have nothing against the manual, on the contrary.
Absolutely, i am sorry to make it not absolutely clear: take the reported impression as a current state we should always try to improve.
Absolutely yes again. And required to get the most out of darktable. Even if i am often too lazy on documenting stuff i did (btw thanks to updating the current manual) it’s the place where documentation should be maintained.
Some more points coming to my mind:
- We dt devs should likely be more “opiniated” on concepts, howto’s according to insights into processing, at least i see it this way. (The forum often tends to advise “whatever works”)
- Can we do better with the QAP? Are newbies really using it?
- It seems the number of newbies and people coming from other software has clearly increased. Do we want/need a “FAQ/First steps” part at the very top of the manual? Recommending a workflow?
- The preferences setting is still overwhelming.
I would support this point. When I look back at my time as a beginner (some years ago), I would have very much appreciated such a section.